Pinochet may face first trial after court ruling

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet moved closer to his first trial on human rights violations yesterday when Chile's Supreme Court allowed murder and kidnapping charges against him to go forward.

The retired general will be placed under house arrest today, according to a court official.

The high court upheld a lower court decision to throw out a defence motion that argued Pinochet, 89, is too ill to be charged in the deaths and disappearances of 10 leftists in the 1970s, when much of South America was governed by US-backed military regimes.

The ruling eliminated a major hurdle in getting Pinochet to trial in the second human rights case to move this far in Chile's court system. An earlier case was thrown out by the Supreme Court.

But the 3-2 ruling by the high court's five-judge criminal panel is not definitive. A lawyer for Pinochet said he will pursue other ways to block a trial in the case known as Operation Condor, a joint effort by South America's military dictators to help each other wipe out political opponents.

Judge Juan Guzman, who indicted Pinochet in the case in December, planned to serve the house arrest order this morning, the court official said on condition of anonymity.

The former dictator was placed under house arrest once before. He has never been tried for human rights violations although dozens of military officers who served him during his 1973-90 rule have been convicted of rights crimes.

More than 3,000 people died in political violence and more than 27,000 were tortured under Pinochet, mostly in the early years of the dictatorship.

"We are happy in the end. This is good news for the New Year and we hope he faces justice in the courts, as he should," said Viviana Diaz, vice president of a human rights group representing family members of arrested and disappeared.

Pinochet is charged with nien kidnappings and one murder in teh cases of 10 Chileans who diappeared abroad under Operation Condor.