Justice delayed for Pinochet, but at least there's hope

Excuse us a we-told-you-so moment, but four years ago we suggested that Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean strongman, was faking dementia. Finally, a judge in Chile has seen the light, but probably too late to extract real justice.
Pinochet, now 89, has most likely gotten away with murder. He oversaw a repressive regime in Chile from 1973 to 1990 during which some 3,200 people who had been detained by government agents simply disappeared. He turned over power to a civilian government in 1990, but remained head of the armed force until 1998, and then managed to win the honorary title of senator-for-life. The title carried immunity, which protected him from criminal prosecution.
Spain tried
But that protective cover began to unravel in 2000, while Pinochet was being treated in a London hospital. A Spanish court demanded his extradition on charges related to persecution of Spanish citizens in Chile during Pinochet's reign. Unfortunately, a British judge bought the argument by Pinochet's lawyers that he was too frail and demented to be held to account legally, so he was shipped home to Santiago.
How foolish that judge must have felt when he saw film of a fit looking Pinochet, dressed in a neat blue suit, alighting from his plane to the cheers of his loyalists. But after Pinochet was stripped of his senatorial title, he faced prosecution in Chile. Amazingly, his lawyers once again claimed that he was too ill and too demented to face prosecution.
But the Chilean judge viewed a video tape of an interview Pinochet gave a Miami television station and rejected that defense.
Guzman succeeds
There's now at least a chance that justice will be done. Judge Juan Guzman indicted Pinochet on charges of nine kidnappings and one murder. Investigations into the whereabouts of millions of dollars Pinochet is suspected of shipping out of the country could result in additional charges.
Pinochet's lawyers continue to claim he is too ill and addled to face charges, but it's possible that they've played that card once too often.
It's possible that Pinochet's legal team will be able to protect him from ever being convicted through lengthy appeals, but at the very least Pinochet will live out his last years under a cloud of uncertainty.
There's a small measure of justice in that, given that the families of his victims have had to live with uncertainty about the fate of their loved ones for years. But a larger measure of justice could have been extracted if a British jurist had not been blind to Pinochet's deceitful ways four years ago.