Chilean judge charges Pinochet in rights case

A Chilean judge yesterday formally charged former dictator Augusto Pinochet with homicide and kidnapping in one of many pending cases related to human rights abuses committed during his 17-year rule.

"General Pinochet was declared mentally fit to stand trial in Chile," Special Judge Juan Guzman told reporters. General Pinochet's defence had tried to argue he was not mentally competent to face the charges.

General Pinochet, who resides in a Santiago mansion and recently turned 89, could be placed under house arrest after formal notification of the charges, which usually takes a day.

General Pinochet's attorneys plan to appeal Judge Guzman's decision. In an earlier human rights case, his defence lawyers successfully kept him from being tried when the Supreme Court ruled that his mild dementia made him mentally incompetent.

The homicide and kidnapping charges filed yesterday relate to nine disappearances and one death that occurred in the 1970s as part of Operation Condor, an intelligence-sharing network of South American dictators who helped each other hunt down dissidents.