Chile court strips Pinochet immunity in fraud case

[Say_What]

Pray that the POS lives so he can go to trial.

<clips>

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - Chile's Supreme Court stripped former dictator
Augusto Pinochet of immunity from prosecution on Friday to face charges in a $27 million tax fraud case, court sources said.

Pinochet, 90, has avoided being processed in a handful of human rights cases because of his health problems, which include mild dementia caused by frequent mini-strokes.

The ruling opens Pinochet to investigation and prosecution for embezzling millions of dollars in public funds said to have been deposited in secret bank accounts outside of Chile.

Chilean courts must decide on a charge-by-charge basis whether to strip Pinochet of his immunity -- a privilege of former presidents.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060818/wl_nm/chile_pinochet_dc_2

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Meanwhile, son Marco is sueing ex-DINA head Manuel Contreras over claims he and his father grew rich from cocaine sales. Now that's priceless!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5172368.stm

[dipsydoodle]

1. 9/11

Would be good day to put him on trial.

[Say_What]

2. Yes!! and this year marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination

of Orlando Letelier and his US assistant Ronni Moffit who were car bombed by Chile's DINA on September 21,1976 along Washington's Embassy Row--the first terrorist attack on US soil. There is much evidence that Bush I as Dir of CIA knew this was gonna happen and did nothing to prevent it.

From Letelier's speech at Madison Square Garden 10 September 1976 just days before his assassination:

I was born a Chilean,
I am a Chilean,
I will die a Chilean.
They, the fascists, were born traitors,
live as traitors
and will be remembered forever as fascist traitors.




Letelier under arrest by US-supported Pinochet's troops at La Moneda. He is beaten regularly. His fingers are broken. Orlando Letelier spends the next year imprisoned in a concentration camp on Dawson Island in Tierra del Fuego.

[Say_What]

3. Paraguayan Dictator's Death Revives Debate on Pinochet

Background information on DINA and Letelier's assassins.

<clips>

...The analogies between Stroessner and Pinochet go beyond their common characteristics as elderly former dictators. They also forged certain ties while ruling their countries with an iron fist.

Stroessner was one of the few exceptions to the international community's ostracism of the Chilean dictatorship. In September 1974, a year after the coup d'etat in which Pinochet overthrew democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende, the Paraguayan strongman visited Santiago as a guest of honour to celebrate the "day of glories of the army", and exchanged decorations with Pinochet.

In addition, it was the Paraguayan dictatorship (1954-1989) that provided fake passports to two DINA agents, Major Armando Fernández Larios and Michael Townley, a U.S. expatriate, thus enabling them to enter the United States with the cover needed to plan Letelier's assassination, in conjunction with members of the anti-Castro Cuban exile community.

Furthermore, "Stroessner, along with other dictators like Augusto Pinochet, Rafael Videla (of Argentina), Juan María Bordaberry (of Uruguay) and Hugo Bánzer (of Bolivia), was one of those responsible for the sinister Operation Condor," notes a declaration by the Group of Families of the Detained-Disappeared in Chile.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34379


Two of the US's favorite dictators, Stoessner and Pinochet

[Vidar]

4. Democracy grows in South America.

[Phredicles]

5. I hope Arbusto and the rest of our Insane Clown Posse see Pinochet's

current situation and realize they will NEVER be able to breathe easy the rest of their miserable lives - the possibility of our government extracting its collective head from its hindquarters and prosecuting them will always hang over them.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Hope it haunts them around the clock. Kissinger is already in

jeopardy of being grabbed if he's caught outside the country, as he's wanted for his involvement in the murder of Gen. Rene Schneider in Chile, and hopefully far, far more will follow.