- The Guardian,
- Friday January 28 2000
In the intervening period, Straw used his tenure as home secretary to make the asylum laws as inelastic as possible for impoverished and desperate refugees, while allowing the defendant in the world's landmark torture and kidnapping case to sit in a country house and receive regular teatime visits from Baroness Thatcher. The baroness never noticed or reported any signs of mental deterioration in her old pal and kept on about his courage and fighting spirit, but now we are asked to believe that the general is in such a state of decrepitude that he wouldn't or couldn't even understand the charges against him.
This is what I intended to convey by putting the word humane in inverted commas. The coalition of anti-Pinochet forces with which Jack Straw has to deal - that coalition that favours international human rights law - is not in favour of dragging terrified or disabled people before tribunals that are conducted in a language unknown to the defendant, as happens all the time to deportees from British shores. Nor does it favour keeping people in suspense for long periods about their fate, as has been routine for refugees from dictatorships armed by British weapons manufacturers. So it was quite witty and clever, all things considered, for a Labour minister to discover that common decency and the quality of mercy could and should be applied this one exceptional time.
Usually, the politicised inhumanity of the British home office is justified by reference to the strict letter of the law. This time, the politicised lenience is directly related to the most lax interpretation of the relevant statutes. In this instance, a Spanish request for extradition has been met by an abrupt British statement that the accused is unfit to stand trial - and none of the supposed medical evidence has been made available to the plaintiffs or to the jurisdiction that represents them. "Somewhat absurd," as the Spanish judicial reply so politely understates the case.
That's disgraceful enough on its own. More outrageous still is the distinct possibility that Straw has overstated the findings of his four-person medical team. Sir John Grimley Evans, who admittedly sounds like a Conan Doyle character and who is nonetheless professor of clinical gerontology at Oxford University, has given discrepant interviews about the relationship between Pinochet's medical state and his fitness for the dock. This may be a false issue, in any case, since Pinochet always refused to meet doctors appointed by the Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón.
Straw counters both Spanish and British demands for an evaluation of the medical records by saying - and here again one doffs the hat in salute to a true pseudo-humanitarian - that these cannot be examined without Pinochet's permission! Quite apart from the fact that confidential medical material is presented in court every day, how can a man supposedly suffering from dementia be expected to make such a call, let alone be the judge in his own case?
The pro-Pinochet Sunday Telegraph revealed what has long been common knowledge in a certain area of the left, namely that this political and not medical decision was actually taken in June of last year. The British and Spanish foreign ministers met then at the Rio summit and decided that such a highly toxic defendant could not be allowed to expire on British or Spanish soil. All that remained was the confection of an excuse that would sound good to good people.
It was criminal in the highest degree to ignore an essential submission made by the Spanish court as far back as October 19 1998. This was a request that testimony be taken from Pinochet, whether this testimony would eventuate in a trial or not. Many thousands of Chileans and dozens of other nationals want to know what happened to their relatives, in circumstances too awful to recapitulate. Pinochet can shed light on this, in cases where he is not the defendant. Or he could have.
In January Judge Garzón renewed this forlorn appeal for a Comisión Rogatoria, simply to take evidence from the prime source. I doubt it will weigh much. The Blair and Clinton administrations didn't just dislike the idea of Pinochet as a defendant. They rejected the possibility of his even being a witness. And this is part of the measure of their own complicity, which is why we ought to hope that one day, they get justice too.
• Reprinted from the current issue of The Nation, New York
