Eternal Regret
    By Pierre Haski
    Liberation

    Monday 11 December 2006

    At the instant Augusto Pinochet disappears, a photograph immediately comes to mind: that of Salvador Allende, submachine gun in hand at the Moneda Palace in Santiago, a few moments before his death during the September 11, 1973, military coup d'etat. Dignity and honor opposing abjection and horror. It's something of an understatement to say that for four decades Pinochet has incarnated the picture postcard bastard. The memory of the Santiago stadium internees, of the disappeared, of the tortures of the Pinochet era will not disappear with him. His natural death does not make us any more forgiving, arousing only the eternal regret that this man, who never expressed the slightest regret for the crimes committed in his name, was never tried. Justice almost caught up with him during his visit to London in 1998, when Spanish Judge Balthazar Garzn unsuccessfully attempted to call him to account. And he would certainly be an ideal client for the brand new International Criminal Court if his crimes had just been committed today. It was the thought of men like Pinochet that advanced the concept of international justice in people's awareness and in texts. And we are allowed to hope that Augusto Pinochet, and what he represented, as well as the support and international encouragement from which he profited [Henry Kissinger, who played a key, but never elucidated, role in this matter, is still kicking ... ], really belong to the past. The fact that Chile is led today by Michelle Bachelet, a socialist as well as the daughter of one of Pinochet's victims, constitutes - from that point of view - an optimistic symbol and the ultimate revenge on the dictator.