When was General Augusto Pinochet born?
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (; ; 25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general, politician and US-backed dictator of Chile between 1973 and 1990 who remained the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army until 1998 and was also President of the Government Junta of Chile between 1973 and 1981.
Pinochet assumed power in Chile following a United States-backed coup d'état on 11 September 1973 that overthrew the democratically elected socialist Unidad Popular government of President Salvador Allende and ended civilian rule. Several academics – including Peter Winn, Peter Kornbluh and Tim Weiner – have stated that the support of the United States was crucial to the coup and the consolidation of power afterward. Pinochet had been promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the Army by Allende on 23 August 1973, having been its General Chief of Staff since early 1972. In December 1974, the ruling military junta appointed Pinochet Supreme Head of the nation by joint decree, although without the support of one of the coup's instigators, Air Force General Gustavo Leigh. Following his rise to power, Pinochet persecuted leftists, socialists, and political critics, resulting in the executions of from 1,200 to 3,200 people, the internment of as many as 80,000 people and the torture of tens of thousands. According to the Chilean government, the number of executions and forced disappearances was 3,095.
Gladys Marín
On January 12, 1998, Marín filed a complaint — the first person in Chile to do so — against Augusto Pinochet, accusing him of genocide, kidnapping, illicit association and illegal inhumation.
Augusto Pinochet
On June 2, 2017, Chilean judge Hernan Cristoso sentenced 106 former Chilean intelligence officials to between 541 days and 20 years in prison for their role in the kidnapping and murder of 16 left-wing activists in 1974 and 1975.
Augusto Pinochet
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of judge Juan Guzmán's request on August 2000, and Pinochet was indicted on 1 December 2000 for the kidnapping of 75 opponents in the Caravan of Death case. Guzmán advanced the charge of kidnapping as the 75 were officially "disappeared": even though they were all most likely dead, the absence of their corpses made any charge of "homicide" difficult.
Universal Genève
Fernando Aubel, a former Chilean Air Force General (1978–1990) under Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship, recalled receiving a Universal Genève chronometer wristwatch as a young man and still wearing it at the present, according to a personal memoir.
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
In 1998, Pinochet, who still had much influence in Chile, travelled to the United Kingdom for medical treatment—allegations have been made that he was also there to negotiate arms contracts. While there, he was arrested on 17 October 1998 under an international arrest warrant issued by judge Baltasar Garzón of Spain, and was placed under house arrest: initially in the clinic where he had just undergone back surgery, and later in a rented house. The charges included 94 counts of torture of Spanish citizens, the 1975 assassination of Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria, and one count of conspiracy to commit torture—allegations of abuses had been made numerous times before his arrest, including since the beginning of his rule, but never acted upon. Still struggling with the conditions set by the difficult transition to democracy, the Chilean government of the "Concertación", then headed by President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, opposed his arrest, extradition to Spain, and trial.
Rodrigo Rojas DeNegri
Rodrigo Andrés Rojas De Negri (7 March 1967 – 6 July 1986), known as Rodrigo Rojas, was a young photographer who was burned alive during a street demonstration against the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
Francisco Javier Cuadra
Francisco Javier Cuadra Lizana (born 23 June 1954) is a Chilean lawyer, academic, and politician. He was a minister under the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, dean of the Faculty of Law, and later rector of Diego Portales University.
Ricardo Lagos
During the 1980s, Lagos assumed a fundamental role in the fight for the recovery of democracy. In addition to being one of the leaders of the Socialist Party of Chile, he became President of the Democratic Alliance, a force that grouped the majority of the democratic parties opposing the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In 1983, he decided to leave his position as international civil employee in the United Nations. In December of that year, he became president of the Democratic Alliance. In 1987, as the president of the Committee of the Left for Free Elections, he called on all citizens and parties to enroll in the electoral registries to vote "no" in a 1988 national plebiscite on whether Pinochet should be allowed to remain president of Chile.
Margarita Pisano
Margarita Pisano Fischer was born in Punta Arenas, Chile on 28 October 1932.
She was one of the founders of La Casa de la Mujer La Morada, Radio Tierra, and Movimiento Feminista Autónomo. In addition, she was one of the founders of Movimiento Feminista, an opposition group to the Military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet where the slogan was "Democracy in the country, in the house and in the bed", a phrase promoted by Margarita and Julieta Kirkwood.
Augusto Pinochet
After having been placed under house arrest in Britain in October 1998 and initiating a judicial and public relations battle, the latter run by Thatcherite political operative Patrick Robertson, he was eventually released in March 2000 on medical grounds by the Home Secretary Jack Straw without facing trial. Straw had overruled a House of Lords decision to extradite Pinochet to face trial in Spain.
Baltasar Garzón
On 10 October 1998, Garzón issued an international warrant for the arrest of former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet for the alleged deaths and torture of Spanish citizens. The Chilean Truth Commission (1990–91) report was the basis for the warrant, marking an unprecedented use of universal jurisdiction to attempt to try a former dictator for a crime committed abroad. Eventually it was turned down by British Home Secretary Jack Straw, who rejected Garzón's request to have Pinochet extradited to Spain on health grounds.
Augusto Pinochet
However, Pinochet died a few days later, on 10 December 2006, without having been convicted of any of the crimes of which he was accused.
Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front
On September 7, 1986, after months of planning, the FPMR attacked President Augusto Pinochet's car in an assassination attempt. Five of Pinochet's bodyguards were killed and eleven wounded. Pinochet, however, only suffered minor injuries. He was riding the car with his then 10-year-old grandson who survived unharmed. Also in 1986, Chilean security forces caught the FPMR smuggling an 80-ton shipment of weapons in Carrizal Bajo, including C-4 plastic explosives, RPG-7 and M72 LAW rocket launchers as well as more than three thousand M-16 rifles.
Institute for Policy Studies
In 1976, agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet assassinated two IPS members of staff on Washington’s Embassy Row. The target of the car bomb attack was Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean government minister and ambassador to the United States, one of Pinochet’s most outspoken critics and the head of IPS's sister organization, the Transnational Institute (TNI). Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a 25-year-old IPS development associate, was also killed.
Léonie Duquet
Léonie Duquet (April 9, 1916, Longemaison, Doubs, France – 1977, Argentina) was a French nun who was arrested in December 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina and "disappeared." She was believed killed by the military regime of Argentine President Jorge Rafael Videla during the Dirty War. Alice Domon, a French nun working with Duquet, disappeared a few days later. They had been working in poor neighborhoods of Buenos Aires in the 1970s and supported the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, founded in 1977. Despite repeated efforts by France to trace the sisters, the Argentine military dictatorship was unresponsive.
In 1990 a French court in Paris tried Argentine Captain Alfredo Astiz, known to have arrested Duquet and believed implicated in the "disappearance" of Domon, for kidnapping the two sisters. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment "in absentia". In Argentina at the time, he and other military and security officers were shielded from prosecution by Pardon Laws passed in 1986 and 1987. These were repealed in 2003 and ruled unconstitutional in 2005, and the government re-opened prosecution of war crimes.
Caravan of Death
In June 1999, the magistrate Juan Guzmán Tapia, who had indicted Augusto Pinochet on his return from London, ordered the arrest of five retired military officers for their part in the Caravan of Death. Pinochet himself had been indicted by the Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón in 1998 after complaints presented by Victoria Saavedra and the "Mujeres de Calama" (Calama's Women), which included the Caravan of Death case investigated by Guzmán Tapia.
Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois
Auguste Anicet, later Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois (25 December 1806 – 12 January 1871) was a French dramatist. He was born in Paris.
Military dictatorship of Chile (1973–1990)
On his 91st birthday on 25 November 2006, in a public statement to supporters, Pinochet for the first time claimed to accept "political responsibility" for what happened in Chile under his regime, though he still defended the 1973 coup against Salvador Allende. In a statement read by his wife Lucia Hiriart, he said, "Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbour no rancour against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all. ... I take political responsibility for everything that was done". Despite this statement, Pinochet always refused to be confronted to Chilean justice, claiming that he was senile. He died two weeks later while indicted on human rights and corruption charges, but without having been sentenced.
Extrajudicial killing
When General Augusto Pinochet assumed power in 1973, he immediately ordered the purges, torture, and deaths of more than 3,000 supporters of the previous government without trial. During his regime, which lasted from 1973 to 1989, elements of the military and police continued committing extrajudicial killings. These included Manuel Contreras, the former head of Chile's National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), which served as Pinochet's secret police. He was behind numerous assassinations and human rights abuses such as the 1974 abduction and forced disappearance of Socialist Party leader Victor Olea Alegria. Some of the killings were also coordinated with other right-wing dictatorships in the Southern Cone in the so-called Operation Condor. There were reports of United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) involvement, particularly within its activities in Central and South America that promoted anti-Communist coups. While CIA's complicity was not proven, American dollars supported the regimes that carried out extrajudicial killings such as the Pinochet administration. CIA, for instance, helped create DINA and the agency admitted that Contreras was one of its assets.
Alejandro Zambra
Alejandro Zambra was raised in 1975 in Maipú, Chile, a suburb of Santiago, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. In a magazine interview with his close friend from his Master's program, Zambra explains his thoughts on growing up in Chile during the 1970s and 1980s. Growing up in such a time, Zambra considers himself and his generation, "children of the dictatorship." He later describes how his life changed after Pinochet's end of power, "The nineties were a time of smudging out. The dictatorship tried to impose all of those stupid discourses, and those discourses erased us."
Annois
Charles Augustus Pinguet (also called "Badinguet") was born in Annois on 1 July 1826. On 1 February 1840 aged 14 he began working as a "cad" (valet service in the army) working as a painter on the maintenance of the Château de Ham. He became a friend of Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte during his imprisonment there for six years. On 25 May 1846 the future Napoleon III dressed in Pinguet's clothes: blue pants, blue cloth coat, hat, and shoes. Pinguet gave him a board soiled with lime mortar and plaster. On 25 May 1846 at six in the morning, Napoleon's escape began and he was in England by the next day.
Augusto Pinochet
On 5 October 1988, the "NO" option won with 55.99% of the votes, against 44.01% of "YES" votes. Pinochet accepted the result and the ensuing Constitutional process led to presidential and legislative elections the following year.
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
In November 2005, Pinochet was deemed fit to stand trial by the Chilean Supreme Court and was indicted and put under house arrest on tax fraud and passport forgery charges but was released on bail; however, he remained under house arrest due to unrelated human rights charges.
Campaign advertising
One of the most historically effective and unprecedented uses of campaign advertising took place in Chile in the year 1988. Chile's president, General Augusto Pinochet, who was notorious for ordering the torture and killing of political enemies, decided to issue a referendum in which the Chilean people could vote "yes" or "no" on the continuation of his regime. Overconfident in the idea that the majority of Chileans viewed him as a benevolent leader, Pinochet allowed his opposition fifteen minutes of airtime on the national television station each day for the twenty-seven days preceding the October 5 referendum. A creative team composed of Eugenio García, Francisco Celedón, and other members of Chile's Christian Democratic Party undertook the effort to air a hard-hitting and impactful political ad campaign against Pinochet. This campaign differed from many others in that it lacked a candidate or central ideology around which to base itself. However, instead of using negative attack ads, the campaign's creators decided to imbue their advertisements with a sense of joy, or "alegría". The campaign was overwhelmingly successful; 7.2 million votes were cast, with 3.96 million opposing the Pinochet regime. Pinochet stepped down peacefully in the year 1990, passing on leadership to a democratic civilian government. The results for this election were believed to have large-scale effects for worldwide democracy.
Hernán Büchi
Hernán Alberto Büchi Buc (; born March 6, 1949) is a Chilean economist who served as minister of finance of the Pinochet dicatorship. In 1989 he ran unsuccessfully for president with support of Chilean right-wing parties.
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
In 2006, General Manuel Contreras, head of the Chilean secret police DINA under Pinochet, alleged in testimony sent to Judge Claudio Pavez (in charge of the Huber case) that Pinochet and his son Marco Antonio Pinochet were involved in the clandestine production of chemical and biological weapons, and the production (under Eugenio Berríos's direction), sale and trafficking of cocaine. These allegations were never fully investigated by the Chilean courts, and neither was a government commission set up to establish their veracity.
Military dictatorship of Chile (1973–1990)
In the 1970s junta members Gustavo Leigh and Augusto Pinochet clashed on several occasions beginning in the day of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. Leigh criticized Pinochet for having joined the coup very late and then pretending to keep all power for himself. In December 1974 Leigh opposed the proposal to name Pinochet president of Chile. Leigh recalls about that moment that, "Pinochet was furious, he hit the board, broke the glass, injured his hand a little and bled. Then, Merino and Mendoza told me I should sign, because if not the junta would split. I signed.". Leigh's primary concern was Pinochet's consolidating of the legislative and executive branches of government under the new government. In particular, Pinochet's decision to enact a plebiscite without formally alerting the other junta members. Leigh, although a fervent supporter of the regime and hater of marxist ideology, had already taken steps to separate the executive and legislative branches. Pinochet is said to have been angered by Leigh's continued founding of a structure to divide the executive and legislative branches, eventually leading to Pinochet consolidating power and Leigh being dumped from the regime. Leigh tried to fight his dismissal from the military and government junta but on July 24, 1978 his office was blocked by paratroopers. In accordance with legal rights established by the junta government, its members could not be dismissed without evidence of impairment. So the Pinochet and junta members had Leigh declared unfit. Airforce General Fernando Matthei replaced Leigh as junta member.
Hugo Salas Wenzel
Hugo Salas Wenzel was a General in the Chilean Army during the Dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. In August 2007 he was the first former senior military official sentenced to life for human rights violations in Chile during the 1980s.
Augusto Pinochet
Pinochet resigned from his senatorial seat shortly after the Supreme Court's July 2002 ruling. In May 2004, the Supreme Court overturned its precedent decision, and ruled that he was capable of standing trial. In arguing their case, the prosecution presented a recent TV interview Pinochet had given for a Miami-based television network, which raised doubts about his alleged mental incapacity. In December 2004, he was charged with several crimes, including the 1974 assassination of General Prats and the Operation Colombo case in which 119 died, and was again placed under house arrest. He suffered a stroke on 18 December 2004. Questioned by his judges in order to know if, as President, he was the direct head of DINA, he answered: "I don't remember, but it's not true. And if it were true, I don't remember."
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
This tax fraud filing, related to Pinochet's and his family secret bank accounts in the United States and in Caribbean islands, for an amount of USD $27 million, shocked the Pinochetist sector of the Chilean public opinion more than the accusations of human rights abuses. Ninety percent of these funds would have been raised between 1990 and 1998, when Pinochet was Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and would essentially have come from weapons traffic (when purchasing Belgian Mirage fighter aircraft in 1994, Dutch Léopard tanks, Swiss Mowag tanks or by illegal sales of weapons to Croatia, in the middle of the Balkan war; the later case has been connected by the Chilean justice with the assassination of Colonel Gerardo Huber in 1992). General Pinochet was reckoned to owe to the Chilean tax administration a total of $16.5 million.
Augusto Pinochet
Pinochet organized a plebiscite on 11 September 1980 to ratify a new constitution, replacing the 1925 Constitution drafted during Arturo Alessandri's presidency. The new Constitution, partly drafted by Jaime Guzmán, a close adviser to Pinochet who later founded the right-wing party Independent Democratic Union (UDI), gave a lot of power to the President of the Republic—Pinochet. It created some new institutions, such as the Constitutional Tribunal and the controversial National Security Council (COSENA). It also prescribed an 8-year presidential period, and a single-candidate presidential referendum in 1988, where a candidate nominated by the Junta would be approved or rejected for another 8-year period. The new constitution was approved by a margin of 67.04% to 30.19% according to official figures; the opposition, headed by ex-president Eduardo Frei Montalva (who had supported Pinochet's coup), denounced extensive irregularities such as the lack of an electoral register, which facilitated multiple voting, and said that the total number of votes reported to have been cast was very much larger than would be expected from the size of the electorate and turnout in previous elections. Interviews after Pinochet's departure with people involved with the referendum confirmed that fraud had, indeed, been widespread. The Constitution was promulgated on 21 October 1980, taking effect on 11 March 1981. Pinochet was replaced as President of the Junta that day by Admiral Merino.
José María Pino Suárez
Pino Suárez was born on 8 September 1869 in Tenosique, Tabasco, to Alfredo Pino Camára and Josefa Baltasara Suárez. He was a direct descendant of war hero Pedro Sainz de Baranda who famously led the capitulation of the fort of San Juan de Ulúa in 1825, thus conquering the last Spanish foothold in Mexican territory, and effectively ending the Mexican War of Independence. Other members of the distinguished Baranda family include two of Sainz de Baranda's sons, Joaquín Baranda and Pedro Baranda who were Pino Suárez's uncles. The former was a gifted historian, politician and writer who held the Governorship of Campeche on several occasions, as well as being appointed Minister of Justice by President Manuel González, a position he would hold for nearly twenty years thereafter. The latter, General Pedro Baranda would play a crucial role in the existence of the states of Campeche and Morelos, distinguishing himself as the first Governor of the latter. During the War of Reform, General Pedro Barranda supported President Benito Juárez. Another uncle of José Maria Pino Suárez was Joaquín Demetrio Casasús, a prominent jurist, economist, politician and writer. The grandparents of Pino Suárez were (paternally) Tomás Pino and Perfecta Salvatiel. On the maternal branch, his grandparents were José Eusebio Suárez and Baltasara Abreu. At a young adolescent age, Pino Suárez left Tenosique for Yucatán, where he studied at the Catholic School of San Idelfonso, which followed a programme closely linked to the French Lycée. On 12 September 1894, Pino concluded his legal studies at the Escuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia de Yucatán.
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
In that case Pinochet's immunity was set off by the Appeal Court of Santiago, and this was confirmed by the Supreme Court on 19 October 2005. The judiciary procedure could eventually have led to a trial for Pinochet, as well as for his wife Lucia Hiriart, and one of his sons, Marco Antonio Pinochet, sued for complicity. Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia remained however, at the time, skeptical of the probability of a trial, either for human rights violations or for fiscal fraud. However, some medical examinations reported that the physical and mental health condition of the former dictator would have allowed him to be judged. On 23 November 2005, judge Carlos Cerda charged Pinochet for fiscal fraud and ordered his arrest. Pinochet was freed under caution, as following the judgment minutes, "his freedom did not represent a danger for the security of the society". It was the fourth time in seven years that Augusto Pinochet was indicted and charged for illegal behavior.
Augusto Pinochet
Furthermore, in 2007, fifteen years of investigation led to the conclusion that the 1992 assassination of DINA Colonel Gerardo Huber was most probably related to various illegal arms traffic carried out, after Pinochet's resignation from power, by military circles very close to himself. Huber had been assassinated a short time before he was due to testify in the case concerning the 1991 illegal export of weapons to Croatian army. The deal involved 370 tons of weapons, sold to Croatia by Chile on 7 December 1991, when the former country was under a United Nations' embargo because of the support for Croatia war in Yugoslavia. In January 1992, the judge Hernán Correa de la Cerda wanted to hear Gerardo Huber in this case, but the latter may have been silenced to avoid implicating Pinochet in this new case—although the latter was not anymore President, he remained at the time Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Pinochet was at the center of this illegal arms trade, receiving money through various offshores and front companies, including the Banco Coutts International in Miami.
Augusto Pinochet
Pinochet was born in Valparaíso, the son of Augusto Pinochet Vera, a descendant of an 18th-century French Breton immigrant from Lamballe, and Avelina Ugarte Martínez, a woman whose family had been in Chile since the 17th century and was of partial Basque descent. Pinochet went to primary and secondary school at the San Rafael Seminary of Valparaíso, the Rafael Ariztía Institute (Marist Brothers) in Quillota, the French Fathers' School of Valparaíso, and then to the Military School in Santiago, which he entered in 1931. In 1935, after four years studying military geography he graduated with the rank of "alférez" (Second Lieutenant) in the infantry. In September 1937, Pinochet was assigned to the "Chacabuco" Regiment, in Concepción. Two years later, in 1939, then with the rank of Sub-lieutenant, he moved to the "Maipo" Regiment, garrisoned in Valparaíso. He returned to Infantry School in 1940. On 30 January 1943, Pinochet married Lucía Hiriart Rodríguez, with whom he had five children: Inés Lucía, María Verónica, Jacqueline Marie, Augusto Osvaldo and Marco Antonio.
José Zalaquett
José ""Pepe"" Zalaquett Daher (born 10 March 1942) is a Chilean lawyer, renowned for his work in the defence of human rights during the "de facto" regime that governed Chile under General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990.
Human rights violations in Pinochet's Chile
The "Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional" () or DINA was the Chilean secret police in the government of Augusto Pinochet. DINA was established in November 1973, as a Chilean Army intelligence unit headed by General Manuel Contreras and vice-director Raúl Iturriaga, who fled from justice in 2007. It was separated from the army and made an independent administrative unit in June 1974, under the aegis of decree #521. DINA made it possible for Augusto Pinochet to come to power.
Augusto Pinochet
A military junta was established immediately following the coup, made up of General Pinochet representing the Army, Admiral José Toribio Merino representing the Navy, General Gustavo Leigh representing the Air Force, and General César Mendoza representing the "Carabineros" (national police). As established, the junta exercised both executive and legislative functions of the government, suspended the Constitution and the Congress, imposed strict censorship and curfew, banned all parties and halted all political and perceived subversive activities. This military junta held the executive role until 17 December 1974, after which it remained strictly as a legislative body, the executive powers being transferred to Pinochet with the title of President.
Lucía Pinochet
On September 13, 2007, Pinochet announced her intention to run as independent for a seat in parliament for the 23rd district (Las Condes, Vitacura, Lo Barnechea) in Santiago. However, she was arrested in October 2007 in the frame of the Riggs case, along with Pinochet's four other children and Lucia Hiriart, and 17 other persons (including two generals, one of his ex-lawyers and his ex-secretary). They are charged of embezzlement and use of false passports, accused of having illegally transferred $27m (£13.2m) to foreign bank accounts during Pinochet's rule.
Patricio Aylwin
Patricio Aylwin Azócar (; 26 November 1918 – 19 April 2016) was a Chilean politician from the Christian Democratic Party, lawyer, author, professor and former senator. He was the first president of Chile after dictator Augusto Pinochet, and his election marked the Chilean transition to democracy in 1990. Despite resistance from elements of the Chilean military and government after his election, Patricio Aylwin was staunch in his support for the Chilean National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation which exposed the Chilean government's brutalities.
Pinochet in Suburbia
Pinochet in Suburbia (retitled "Pinochet's Last Stand" for US release) is a 2006 drama about former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and the attempts to extradite him from Great Britain during his visit there in 1998 for medical treatment. It was written and directed by Richard Curson Smith.
Augusto Pinochet
Thereafter, Aylwin won the December 1989 presidential election with 55% of the votes, against less than 30% for the right-wing candidate, Hernán Büchi, who had been Pinochet's Minister of Finances since 1985 (there was also a third-party candidate, Francisco Javier Errázuriz, a wealthy aristocrat representing the extreme economic right, who garnered the remaining 15%). Pinochet thus left the presidency on 11 March 1990 and transferred power to the new democratically elected president.
Assassination of Carmelo Soria
Carmelo Soria (Madrid, 5 November 1921 – Santiago de Chile, 16 July 1976) was a Spanish-Chilean United Nations diplomat. A member of the CEPAL (United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) in the 1970s, he was assassinated by Chile's DINA agents as a part of Operation Condor. Augusto Pinochet was later personally indicted over this case.
National Union Movement
The National Union Movement (, MUN) was a Chilean political party that supported the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, founded on 27 November 1983 by Andrés Allamand, Francisco Bulnes Sanfuentes, Pedro Ibáñez Ojeda and other former members and supporters of the National Party, the Radical Democracy and Christian Democrats expelled from the party. Many members of the National Union Movement occupied public offices and important positions during that regime. The referent defined itself as independent, conservative and liberal.
National Advance
National Advance (, AN) was a Chilean right-wing political party of nationalist ideology who supported the military regime led by Augusto Pinochet. They had party legal existence between January 1988 and July 1991.
Carretera Austral
During the military dictatorship the belief that the Carretera Austral bears the name of Augusto Pinochet arises, which has been denied by the authorities, since no official document supports this assumption. Also, there have been propaganda elements such as posters and maps with the unofficial name "Carretera Longitudinal Austral Presidente Pinochet".
Jean Guichet
Jean Guichet (born 10 August 1927 in Marseilles, France) is a French industrialist and former racing driver. He is most well known for winning the 1964 24 Hours of Le Mans with co-driver Nino Vaccarella, driving a Ferrari 275 P for Scuderia Ferrari. Guichet raced sports cars and rallied from 1948 through the late 1970s. He began his racing career as a self-funded independent driver but would later drive for teams including Scuderia Ferrari, the Abarth works team, Ecurie Filipinetti, Maranello Concessionaires, and NART.
Augusto Pinochet
Pinochet suffered a heart attack on the morning of 3 December 2006, and subsequently the same day he was given the last rites. On 4 December 2006, the Chilean Court of Appeals ordered the suspension of his house arrest. On 10 December 2006 at 13:30 local time (16:30 UTC) he was taken to the intensive care unit. He died of congestive heart failure and pulmonary edema, surrounded by family members, at the Military Hospital at 14:15 local time (17:15 UTC).
Augusto Pinochet
Pinochet's 17-year rule was given a legal framework through a controversial 1980 plebiscite, which approved a new constitution drafted by a government-appointed commission. In a 1988 plebiscite, 56% voted against Pinochet's continuing as President, which led to democratic elections for the presidency and Congress. After stepping down in 1990, Pinochet continued to serve as Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army until 10 March 1998, when he retired and became a senator-for-life in accordance with his 1980 Constitution. However, Pinochet was arrested under an international arrest warrant on a visit to London on 10 October 1998 in connection with numerous human rights violations. Following a legal battle, he was released on grounds of ill-health and returned to Chile on 3 March 2000. In 2004, Chilean Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia ruled that Pinochet was medically fit to stand trial and placed him under house arrest. By the time of his death on 10 December 2006, about 300 criminal charges were still pending against him in Chile for numerous human rights violations during his 17-year rule and tax evasion and embezzlement during and after his rule. He was also accused of having corruptly amassed at least 28 million USD. Despite the indictment and 300 charges, he only served time in house arrest.
Gerardo Huber
Gerardo Huber graduated from military school in 1964, specializing as an engineer. Ten years later, after Augusto Pinochet's coup in 1973, he began working for the DINA intelligence agency and was sent to Argentina to infiltrate groups supporting the Chilean MIR faction in its struggle against Pinochet's dictatorship. When he returned to Chile, he worked with American-born DINA agent Michael Townley in producing chemical weapons, which were used against political dissidents.
Augusto Pinochet
Pinochet returned to Chile on 3 March, 2000. His first act when landing in Santiago's airport was to triumphantly get up from his wheelchair to the acclaim of his supporters. He was first greeted by his successor as head of the Chilean armed forces, General Ricardo Izurieta. President-elect Ricardo Lagos said the retired general's televised arrival had damaged the image of Chile, while thousands demonstrated against him.
Ramón Griffero
Ramón Griffero Sánchez (born 29 November 1954) is a Chilean playwright and theater director, one of the most prominent in his country. He is considered an emblematic figure of the national theater during the 1980s; his earliest productions are associated with cultural and political resistance to the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Juan Guzmán Tapia
On 12 January 1998, human rights lawyers in Chile submitted the first of more than 70 lawsuits against General Pinochet. Guzmán was appointed to take charge of the investigation. Arrested in London in October 1998 under orders of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, Pinochet was finally deemed unfit for trial and returned home in March 2000.
Augusto Pinochet
In his memoirs Pinochet said that he was the leading plotter of the coup and had used his position as commander-in-chief of the Army to coordinate a far-reaching scheme with the other two branches of the military and the national police. In later years, however, high military officials from the time have said that Pinochet reluctantly became involved only a few days before the coup was scheduled to occur, and followed the lead of the other branches (especially the Navy, under Merino) as they executed the coup.
Harry G. Barnes Jr.
Although the American government, in particular Henry Kissinger, had supported the rise of dictator Augusto Pinochet, by 1985 the Chilean opposition started to campaign against extending his rule. Barnes supported the ultimately successful effort, angering Pinochet, who called him "Dirty Harry."
Augusto Pinochet
Under the influence of the free market-oriented neoliberal "Chicago Boys", Pinochet's military government implemented economic liberalization, including currency stabilization, removed tariff protections for local industry, banned trade unions and privatized social security and hundreds of state-owned enterprises. These policies produced high economic growth, but critics state that economic inequality dramatically increased and attribute the devastating effects of the 1982 monetary crisis on the Chilean economy to these policies. For most of the 1990s, Chile was the best-performing economy in Latin America, though the legacy of Pinochet's reforms continues to be in dispute. His fortune grew considerably during his years in power through dozens of bank accounts secretly held abroad and a fortune in real estate. He was later prosecuted for embezzlement, tax fraud and for possible commissions levied on arms deals.
Riggs Bank
The disclosure of the Riggs accounts reignited the case against General Pinochet. A ruling that he was not mentally competent to stand trial was overturned when it was proven that the general himself had orchestrated some of the huge transactions. In 2004, Pinochet was ordered to stand trial for crimes against humanity, and additional claims of mental and physical incompetence were overruled. However, Pinochet died in December 2006 before being judged. In September 2007, Pinochet's widow and five children were indicted by a Chilean court on charges including embezzlement.
1988 Chilean national plebiscite
Army General Augusto Pinochet took power on 11 September 1973 in a coup d'état which deposed the democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende. Allende killed himself as the presidential palace was being bombarded. A military junta — led by Pinochet, Air Force General Gustavo Leigh, Navy Admiral José Toribio Merino, and Carabinero Chief General César Mendoza — was sworn in the same evening. The following day, the four drafted an official document suspending the 1925 constitution and Congress and establishing the Junta as the country's supreme authority. Pinochet was designated as its first president, and the four verbally agreed to rotate the office. Shortly after, the Junta established an advisory committee, which Pinochet was successful in staffing with Army officers loyal to himself. One of their first recommendations was to discard the idea of a rotating presidency, arguing it would create too many administrative problems and lead to confusion. In March 1974, six months after the Junta's establishment, Pinochet verbally attacked the Christian Democratic Party and stated that there was no set timetable for a return to civilian rule. On 18 December 1974 Pinochet was declared Supreme Leader of the nation. After that date, the junta functioned strictly as a legislative body until the return to democracy in 1990.
Riggs Bank
Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile, was widely accused of corruption, illegal arms sales, and torture. In 1994, Riggs officials invited Pinochet to open an account at the bank. In 1998, Pinochet was arrested in the United Kingdom for possible extradition to Spain, and his accounts were subjected to asset freezing by court orders. By using a shell company and hiding accounts from federal regulators, Riggs illegally allowed Pinochet to hide and retain access to much of his fortune.
Augusto Pinochet
In 1956, Pinochet and a group of young officers were chosen to form a military mission to collaborate in the organization of the War Academy of Ecuador in Quito. He remained with the Quito mission for four-and-a-half years, during which time he studied geopolitics, military geography and military intelligence. At the end of 1959 he returned to Chile and was sent to General Headquarters of the 1st Army Division, based in Antofagasta. The following year, he was appointed commander of the "Esmeralda" Regiment. Due to his success in this position, he was appointed Sub-director of the War Academy in 1963. In 1968, he was named Chief of Staff of the 2nd Army Division, based in Santiago, and at the end of that year, he was promoted to brigadier general and Commander in Chief of the 6th Division, garrisoned in Iquique. In his new function, he was also appointed Intendent of the Tarapacá Province.
Chas Gerretsen
In 1973 he won the Robert Capa Gold Medal with David Burnett and Raymond Depardon. He is best known for his coverage of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. His famous photograph of General Pinochet became the embodiment of the Latin American Dictator, the opposite side of the political spectrum to Alberto Korda photograph of Che Gueverra (Guerrillero Heroico).
The image of General Pinochet has an unusual history: it was used on posters, flyers and banners and was often reworked to portray the general as an inhuman monster.
The first time Chas photographed General Pinochet, unwittingly, was on June 19, 1973 during the failed "Coup d'Etat", known as El Tancazo, which the general, ironically, helped put down.
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report about Riggs Bank on 15 July 2004, which had solicited Pinochet and controlled between USD $4 million and $8 million of his assets. According to the report, Riggs participated in money laundering for Pinochet, setting up offshore shell corporations (referring to Pinochet as only "a former public official"), and hiding his accounts from regulatory agencies. The report said the violations were "symptomatic of uneven and, at times, ineffective enforcement by all federal bank regulators, of bank compliance with their anti-money-laundering obligations". In 2006, Pinochet's total wealth was estimated at $28 million or more.
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
In March 2000, after Pinochet's return, the Congress approved a constitutional amendment creating the status of "ex-president", which granted Pinochet immunity from prosecution and guaranteed him a financial allowance. In exchange, it required him to resign his seat of senator-for-life. 111 legislators voted for, and 29 (mostly, if not all, from the left) against. Despite this political move, on 23 May 2000, the Court of Appeal of Santiago lifted Pinochet's parliamentary immunity concerning the Caravan of Death case. This was confirmed by the Supreme Court of Chile, which voted on 8 August 2000, by 14 votes against 6, to strip Pinochet of his parliamentary immunity. On 1 December 2000, the judge Juan Guzmán Tapia indicted Pinochet for the kidnapping of 75 opponents in the Caravan of Death case—Guzmán advanced the charge of kidnapping as they were officially "disappeared": even though they were all most likely dead, the absence of their corpses made any charge of homicide difficult. However, as soon as 11 December 2000, the procedure was suspended by the Court of Appeal of Santiago for medical reasons. Besides the Caravan of Death, 177 other complaints had been filed against him.
Sergio Infante
Infante was living in Chiloe when the military coup of 1973 led by General Augusto Pinochet occurred. He was forced into exile, and left Chile for Argentina. In Buenos Aires Infante stayed just for a few months and continued his way to Sweden where he got refugee status in 1975.
Gerrymandering
The military government which ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990 was ousted in a national plebiscite in October 1988. Opponents of General Augusto Pinochet voted NO to remove him from power and to trigger democratic elections, while supporters (mostly from the right-wing) voted YES to keep him in office for another eight years.
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
Five days later, a Chilean court formally opened an investigation into Pinochet's finances for the first time, on allegations of fraud, misappropriation of funds, and bribery. Then, a few hours later, the state prosecutor, Chile's State Defense Council ("Consejo de Defensa del Estado)", presented a second request for the same judge to investigate Pinochet's assets, but without directly accusing him of crimes. On 1 October 2004, Chile's Internal Revenue Service ("Servicio de Impuestos Internos") filed a lawsuit against Pinochet, accusing him of fraud and tax evasion, for the amount of USD $3.6 million in investment accounts at Riggs between 1996 and 2002. Furthermore, a lawsuit against the Riggs Bank and Joe L. Allbritton, chief executive of the bank until 2001, was closed after the Riggs agreed in February 2005 to pay $9 million to Pinochet's victims in compensation of the money-laundering activity with Pinochet.
Valparaíso
In November 1915, Augusto Pinochet was born in the city.
Augusto Pinochet
By late 1945, Pinochet had been assigned to the "Carampangue" Regiment in the northern city of Iquique. Three years later, he entered the but had to postpone his studies because, being the youngest officer, he had to carry out a service mission in the coal zone of Lota. The following year he returned to his studies in the Academy, and after obtaining the title of Officer Chief of Staff, in 1951, he returned to teach at the Military School. At the same time, he worked as a teachers' aide at the War Academy, giving military geography and geopolitics classes. He was also the editor of the institutional magazine "Cien Águilas" ("One Hundred Eagles"). At the beginning of 1953, with the rank of major, he was sent for two years to the "Rancagua" Regiment in Arica. While there, he was appointed professor of the Chilean War Academy, and returned to Santiago to take up his new position.
Patricio Aylwin
On 5 October 1988, the Chilean national plebiscite was held. A "Yes" vote would grant Pinochet eight more years as president. Despite the widespread expectation that Pinochet would be voted an extended term, the "No" campaign triumphed, in part because of a superb media campaign depicted in the 2012 film "No". Patricio Aylwin was at the center of the movement that defeated General Pinochet. After the plebiscite, he participated in negotiations that led the government and the opposition to agree on 54 constitutional reforms, thereby making possible a peaceful transition from 16 years of dictatorship to democracy.
Marcelo Moren Brito
Marcelo Luis Manuel Moren Brito (July 27, 1935 – September 11, 2015) was a Chilean retired Army colonel and former agent of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the defunct Chilean secret police, during the Pinochet dictatorship from 1973 t0 1990. During the rule of President Augusto Pinochet, Moren Brito, who was nicknamed "el Coronta" and "el Ronco," was the chief of operations at DINA, as well as the head of the Villa Grimaldi, DINA's feared detention center in Peñalolén, where thousands of political prisoners were interrogated and tortured. He was a member of a death squad of Chilean Army officers who carried out the 1973, Caravan of Death, in which at least 75 individuals in military custody were executed, including the singer Víctor Jara.
Augusto Pinochet
According to Pinochet, who was aware of his ancestry, he was taught the French language by an uncle. He would then have forgotten most of it. Pinochet admired Napoleon as the greatest among French and had a framed picture of him. Another French ruler he admired was Louis XIV.
Henry Kissinger
On September 11, 1973, Allende died during a military coup launched by Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet, who became President.
A document released by the CIA in 2000 titled "CIA Activities in Chile" revealed that the United States, acting through the CIA, actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende, and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military.
Arpilleras
In September 1973, following months of political tensions and social unrest in Chile, the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a US-backed coup d'etat carried out by the Chilean military forces under Augusto Pinochet in response to Allende's leftist reforms and the perceived threat of communism. From its first days in power, the Pinochet regime was characterized by widespread human rights violations. In the period immediately following the coup, the junta declared a state of emergency and engaged in arbitrary arrests and abolished all political parties and unions, with tens of thousands of people facing torture, interrogation, and execution in the following years. It has been estimated that 3,000 people were killed or went missing for suspected political reasons over the course of Pinochet's 16 years in power. Additionally, the rapid shift from Allende's socialist policies to Pinochet's neoliberal reforms entailed a "shock treatment" on the Chilean economy, which saw a rapid decline in social spending and substantial layoffs in the civil service, resulting in an 18.7 percent unemployment rate by 1975.
Auguste-Louis Petiet
Auguste-Louis Petiet (19 July 1772 in Rennes – 1 August 1858) was a French brigadier general and a politician.
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
On 28 May 2004, the Court of Appeals voted 14 to 9 to revoke Pinochet's dementia status and, consequently, his immunity from prosecution. In arguing their case, the prosecution presented a recent television interview Pinochet had given for a Miami-based television network. The judges found that the interview raised doubts about the mental incapacity of Pinochet. On 26 August, in a 9 to 8 vote, the Supreme Court confirmed the decision that Pinochet should lose his senatorial immunity from prosecution. On 2 December, the Santiago Appeals Court stripped Pinochet of immunity from prosecution over the 1974 assassination of General Carlos Prats, his predecessor as Army Commander-in-Chief, who was killed by a car bomb while in exile in Argentina. On 13 December, Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia placed Pinochet under house arrest and indicted him over the disappearance of nine opposition activists and the killing of one of them during his regime. However, the Supreme Court reversed the Appeals Court ruling in the Carlos Prats case on 24 March 2005, and thereby affirmed Pinochet's immunity. But in the Operation Colombo case involving the killing of 119 dissidents, the Supreme Court decided on 14 September to strip Pinochet of his immunity. The following day he was acquitted of the human rights case due to his ill health. Late in November, he was again deemed fit to stand trial by the Chilean Supreme Court and was indicted on human rights, for the disappearance of six dissidents arrested by Chile's security services in late 1974, and again placed under house arrest, on the eve of his 90th birthday.
1988 Chilean national plebiscite
The 1988 Chilean national plebiscite was a national referendum held on 5 October 1988 to determine whether Chile's de facto leader, Augusto Pinochet, should extend his rule for another eight years. The "No" side won with nearly 56% of the vote, thus ending the General's 16 years in power.
Manuel Contreras
Juan Manuel Guillermo "Mamo" Contreras Sepúlveda (4 May 1929 – 7 August 2015) was a Chilean Army officer and the former head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Chile's secret police during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In 1995, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for the murder in Washington, D.C. of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier, which he served until 2001.
Lucía Hiriart
María Lucía Hiriart Rodríguez (born 10 December 1922), also known as Lucía Hiriart de Pinochet, is the widow of former Chilean dictator general Augusto Pinochet.
Norman Lamont
In 1998 the former military dictator of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet visited Britain to obtain medical treatment. This prompted a debate about whether he should be arrested and put on trial over his human rights record. Lamont joined with Margaret Thatcher in defending Pinochet, calling him a "good and brave and honourable soldier". His stance was highly controversial.
Ricardo Villalobos
Villalobos was born in Chile on 6 August 1970. In 1973 he moved to Germany with his family to escape the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who had seized power that year.
Tapani Brotherus
Tapani Kaarle Heikinpoika Brotherus (born June 12, 1938 in Copenhagen, Denmark) is a Finnish diplomat who, was acting as a Finnish Chargé d'Affaires in Chile, during the 1973 coup d'état lead by General Augusto Pinochet. Brotherus saved hundreds of Chilean dissidents from death during the coup.
Ignacio Agüero
Ignacio Agüero (born 7 March July 1952) is an award-winning Chilean documentary filmmaker who famously co-directed "No to Pinochet" television spots during Chile's 1988 referendum. He is also known for his work as a character actor in art films and TV miniseries' directed by Raúl Ruiz and José Luis Torres Leiva.
Basclay Zapata
Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes (22 October 1946, Chillán – 3 December 2017, Santiago) was a Chilean military officer and agent of the secret police of Augusto Pinochet.
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
There was a hard-fought 16-month legal battle in the House of Lords, then the highest court of the United Kingdom. Pinochet claimed immunity from prosecution as a former head of state under the State Immunity Act 1978. This was rejected, as the Lords decreed that some international crimes, such as torture, could not be protected by former head-of-state immunity. This judgement was set aside in a second, unprecedented case, on the basis that one of the judges involved was potentially biased due to his ties to Amnesty International, a human rights activist organization that had campaigned against Pinochet for decades and intervened in the case. A third case in March 1999 confirmed the original verdict, but the Lords held in this case that Pinochet could only be prosecuted for crimes committed after 1988, the year during which the United Kingdom implemented legislation for the United Nations Convention Against Torture in the Criminal Justice Act 1988. This invalidated most, but not all, of the charges against him; but the outcome was that extradition could proceed.
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
Despite his release on grounds of ill health, the unprecedented detention of Pinochet in a foreign country for crimes against humanity committed in his own country, without a warrant or request for extradition from his own country, marks a watershed in international law. Some scholars consider it one of the most important events in judicial history since the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals. Judge Garzón's case was largely founded on the principle of universal jurisdiction—that certain crimes are so egregious that they constitute crimes against humanity and can therefore be prosecuted in any court in the world. The British House of Lords ruled that Pinochet had no right to immunity from prosecution as a former head of state, and could be put on trial. In Spain, the Court of Appeal of the "Audiencia Nacional" affirmed Spanish jurisdiction over Argentine and Chilean cases, declaring that domestic amnesty laws (in the case of Chile, the 1978 amnesty law passed by Pinochet's regime) could not bind the Spanish courts. Both for matters concerning the "Dirty War" in Argentina and for Chile, they characterized the crimes as genocides. However, both the Spanish and British decision did not rely on international law, but on domestic legislation: "They talked about universal jurisdiction, but grounded their decision in domestic statutory law."
Denis Auguste Duchêne
He was born on 23 September 1862 at Juzennecourt, Haute-Marne and died on 9 June 1950 at Bihorel, Seine-Inférieure. He was promoted General de Brigade (brigadier-general) on 27 October 1914, then acting General de Division (equivalent to the Anglophone rank of major-general) on 12 March 1915 with the rank confirmed on 28 September 1916.
He commanded the French Tenth Army between December 1916 and December 1917.
Augusto Parra Muñoz
Augusto Parra Muñoz (born 10 August 1942 in Yumbel, Chile) is a Chilean diplomat and is the current Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Chile to the Russian Federation, presenting his Letter of Credence to then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin on 25 July 2006.
Roy Bourgeois
1998
Fr. Bourgeois testified before a Spanish judge seeking the extradition of Chile's ex-dictator General Augusto Pinochet.
Juan Velasco Alvarado
The enormous amount of weaponry purchased by Peru caused a meeting between former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Chilean president, general and US-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1976. Velasco's military plan was to launch a massive sea, air, and land invasion against Chile. In 1999, General Pinochet claimed that if Peru had attacked Chile during 1973 or even 1978, Peruvian forces could have penetrated deep south into Chilean territory, possibly military taking the Chilean city of Copiapó located half way to Santiago. The Chilean Armed Forces considered launching a preventive war to defend itself. Though, Pinochet's Chilean Air Force General Fernando Matthei opposed a preventive war and responded that "I can guarantee that the Peruvians would destroy the Chilean Air Force in the first five minutes of the war". Some analysts believe the fear of attack by Chilean and US officials as largely unjustified but logical for them to experience, considering the Pinochet dictatorship had come into power with a coup against democratically elected president Salvador Allende. According to sources, the alleged invasion scheme could be seen from the Chilean's government perspective as a plan for some kind of leftist counterattack. While acknowledging the Peruvian plans were revisionistic scholar Kalevi J. Holsti claim more important issues behind were the "ideological incompatibility" between the regimes of Velasco Alvarado and Pinochet and that Peru would have been concerned about Pinochet's geopolitical views on Chile's need of naval hegemony in the Southeastern Pacific.
Augusto Pinochet
However, in July 2002, the Supreme Court dismissed Pinochet's indictment in the various human rights abuse cases, for medical reasons (vascular dementia). The debate concerned Pinochet's mental faculties, his legal team claiming that he was senile and could not remember, while others (including several physicians) claimed that he was only affected physically but retained all control of his faculties. The same year, the prosecuting attorney Hugo Guttierez, in charge of the Caravan of Death case, declared, "Our country has the degree of justice that the political transition permits us to have."
Augusto Pinochet
Historian Gabriel Salazar stated that Pinochet's establishment cult of personality around him was a fascist tactic:
Pinochet was publicly known as a man with a lack of culture. This image was reinforced by the fact that he also portrayed himself as a common man with simple ideas. He was also known for being reserved, sharing little about his opinions or feelings. Before wresting power from Allende, Pinochet had written two books, "Geopolítica" (1968) and "Campaña de Tarapacá" (1972), which established him as a major figure in Chile's military literature. In "Geopolítica" Pinochet plagiarized his mentor general Gregorio Rodríguez Tascón by using paragraphs from a 1949 conference presentation of Rodríguez without attributing them to him.
Rodríguez had previously lectured Pinochet and René Schneider and Carlos Prats in geography and geopolitics. In contrast to the two latter Pinochet was not an outstanding student but his persistence and interest in geopolitics made Rodríguez assume the role as his academic mentor. Rodríguez granted Pinochet a slot as assistant lecturer in geopolitics and in geography. According to Rodríguez Pinochet would have been particularly impressed by his lectures on "The Art of War". Pinochet would later succeed Rodríguez in the geopolitics and geography chair.
Augusto Pinochet
In August 1989, Marcelo Barrios Andres, a 21-year-old member of the FPMR (the armed wing of the PCC, created in 1983, which had attempted to assassinate Pinochet on 7 September 1986), was assassinated by a group of military personnel who were supposed to arrest him on orders of Valparaíso's public prosecutor. However, they simply executed him; this case was included in the Rettig Report. Among the killed and disappeared during the military junta were 440 MIR guerrillas. In December 2015, three former DINA agents were sentenced to ten years in prison for the murder of a 29 year old theology student and activist, German Rodriguez Cortes, in 1978. That same month 62 year old Guillermo Reyes Rammsy, a former Chilean soldier during the Pinochet years, was arrested and charged with murder for boasting of participating in 18 executions during a live phone-in to the Chilean radio show "Chacotero Sentimental."
Pol Pot
Pol Pot (, ; born Saloth Sâr 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian communist revolutionary and politician who served as the general secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Khmer nationalist, he led the Khmer Rouge group from 1963 until 1997. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea.
Human Rights Foundation
Writing as president of HRF in the American conservative magazine "National Review", Thor Halvorssen participated in NR's symposium on the death of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and was noted as the only one of the six commentators to condemn Pinochet unequivocally, writing: "Augusto Pinochet took full control of Chile – by force. He shut down parliament, suffocated political life, banned trade unions, and made Chile his sultanate. His government disappeared 3,000 opponents, arrested 30,000 (torturing thousands of them), and controlled the country until 1990."
Assassination of Orlando Letelier
The assassination of Orlando Letelier refers to the September 21, 1976, car bombing, in Washington, D.C., of Orlando Letelier, a leading opponent of Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Letelier, who was living in exile in the United States, was killed along with Ronni Karpen Moffitt, who was in the car along with her husband Michael, who worked for Letelier. The assassination was carried out by agents of the Chilean secret police (the DINA), and was one among many carried out as part of Operation Condor. Declassified U.S. intelligence documents confirm that Pinochet directly ordered the killing.
Baltasar Garzón
On 10 October 1998, Garzón issued an international warrant for the arrest of former Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, for the alleged deaths and torture of Spanish citizens. Although the British government refused to extradite Pinochet, it was the first time that a former head of government had been arrested on the principle of universal jurisdiction.
Human rights violations in Pinochet's Chile
From its inception on September 11, 1973, the Chilean bureaucratic authoritarian regime's ultimate agenda was to repress political dissidents—which some have classified as ""politicide"" (or "political genocide). General Pinochet's assumption of power through a violent, and bloody military coup d'état foreshadowed the brutal conditions that many innocent people would endure over the next 17 years. Pinochet genuinely feared the supporters of the Popular Unity Party (PU) and its leader President Salvador Allende, who had been the first Marxist to become President of a Latin American region through open elections. General Pinochet lived in a state of paranoia, and constantly feared being assassinated or losing power. Thus, he set out to destroy those who were not in unity with his policies, particularly those who had once served the PU.
Michał Kamiński
In 1999, he visited London to present a gorget embossed with an image of the Virgin Mary to former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet along with Marek Jurek and the journalist Tomasz Wołek. "This was the most important meeting of my whole life. Gen Pinochet was clearly moved and extremely happy with our visit," Kamiński told the BBC's Polish service. In the same year, Kamiński won a journalists' award for being the best speaker in the Sejm. However, he later defended his visit to see General Pinochet, saying "we lived in this country subject to communist propaganda. We had little access to the real information, so for many Poles – not just me – this defence of Pinochet was across centre-right political parties in Poland and other eastern European countries at that time. It was my mistake, I admit it. I think every politician has the right to some mistakes. I made this mistake by just reversing the communist propaganda. It was a mistake that decent people of the left made when they were living under right-wing dictatorships – the kind of mistake where you just reverse the black and white propaganda. Today I know much more about Pinochet and I will never call him a hero again. It’s a question of context".
Human rights in Chile
Human rights violations by the military and security forces in Chile were widespread during the rule of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). Estimates of the number killed and "disappeared" during the Pinochet regime range as high as 17,000.
Sergio Onofre Jarpa
Sergio Onofre Jarpa Reyes (born 8 March 1921 in Rengo, Chile) is a Chilean politician who served as a member of the cabinet during the government of Augusto Pinochet.