A lesson from Chile on how democracy, accountability and the rule of law is DONE

nothing like being severely shown up by a latin american country that the bush administration barely acknowledges exists...

Early on the morning of Thursday 4 October 2007, Chileans awoke to the stunning news that the investigative judge Carlos Cerda had delivered a damning resolution on the case of the embezzlement of public funds by the late dictator Augusto Pinochet and his cohorts. A week after the Chilean supreme court had authorised the reopening of Cerda's enquiry, he issued twenty-four arrest warrants for members of Pinochet's immediate family and associates.

Cerda's investigation has built on the United States Senate enquiry of 2004 that unearthed multi-million-dollar accounts in Pinochet's name in the Riggs bank in Miami. The final report shows how, over thirty-one years, Pinochet and his henchmen systematically siphoned off millions from Chilean army reserve funds; used false passports to open foreign bank accounts; earned huge kickbacks in international arms deals; set up ghost companies and purchased a string of luxury properties. It concluded that after the family fortune was totalled up, there was $20,199,753.03 that couldn't be "reasonably accounted for".

By mid-afternoon, the entire Pinochet family, six retired generals, two serving colonels, the ex-dictator's lawyer and eight other members of his inner circle were in police custody. Predictably, the general's 83-year-old widow, Lucia Hiriart, had an attack of hypertension and was whisked to the secretive military hospital where her late husband so often took sanctuary.

Then came the indignation. "This is indescribable political persecution", Pinochet's daughter-in-law, Maria Soledad Olave, screamed at reporters. "Don Augusto is dead; let's leave the hate and vengeance behind." Meanwhile Lucia Hiriart's lawyer denounced "an illegal abusive resolution that violates the most essential of a person's fundamental rights".

But unlike political detainees during Pinochet's 1973-90 reign of terror, those accused of crime in Chile today do have rights; within twenty-four hours Judge Cerda had unexpectedly granted bail to all his prisoners. "Everyone has a right to liberty during their trail", he explained, adding that no reason existed to keep them in preventative custody and as "I shall shortly be leaving the country, I have decided to give them their liberty myself".

folks, THIS is how a REAL democracy operates, with REAL accountability, REAL justice, REAL rights for the accused, and REAL compassion...

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