- guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 March 1999 02.57 BST
The Chilean general's lawyers are asking that the Home Secretary's decision to allow extradition proceedings against their client be overturned. They're following a hint many detected in the Law Lords' judgment last week, which sharply cut down the rap sheet pending against the ex-dictator. Their lordships said Gen Pinochet could only be prosecuted for crimes of torture committed after December 1988, when the UN convention on torture was absorbed into British law. All the other accusations, related to crimes before 1988, would have to be thrown out. Even if the High Court does not accept the Pinochet team's claim that the original extradition decision is now invalid, the lawyers hope Mr Straw will - and that he will, as the Law Lords suggested, reconsider his first ruling. Once he's checked that he has the authority to do so, that is.
It's all become so complicated, it can be hard to keep sight of the principles at stake here. The point, surely, is not one of scale - that General Pinochet must be extradited to face charges of torturing 100 people but not, say, 10. Where would one draw the line? Would 20 be enough to warrant extradition? 50? If numbers are the determining factor then the tireless Spanish magistrate, Baltasar Garzon, has helped by adding a thick file's worth of extra, post-1988 cases to the Pinochet docket. But that should not be the point. Even a single case of torture deserves prosecution. And if extradition is the only way of ensuring that happens, then the extradition process green-lighted by Mr Straw should go on. If it was good enough in December, it's good enough now.
