Monitor: Extradition of General Pinochet

Views on whether the UK should send Augusto Pinochet to Spain to face trial for murder and torture when he was head of state in Chile

El Pais

Spain

IS THERE a more appropriate commemoration of the anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights than the British Home Secretary's decision to allow his courts to process our request for the extradition of Pinochet. The case has not only aroused international passions and unleashed controversy, but taken on a direction and speed that few would have dared predict. It is doing more for international law than decades of conventions ignored by signatory governments.

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El Mercurio

Chile

THE BRITISH Labour Government has sought to ignore the fact that Chile is a sovereign and independent country. However, the minister [Britain's Home Secretary] can at any moment take political factors into account and decree the end of the extradition process, and end the gravest situation that Chilean juridical sovereignty has had to face this century.

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El Mundo

Spain

PINOCHET CAN no longer expect the British to be magnanimous. Their government has shown courage in taking a decision that means he will not be able to leave Britain for a long time. He must be cursing the day when he took the plane for London and tea with Thatcher.

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The Washington Post

US

A ROGUE Spanish judge is using international law to trample Chilean sovereignty and overrule [its] functioning judiciary and democratically- elected government. And advocates of the International Criminal Court are cheering. (Jesse Helm)