Justice stalks Pinochet's old torture chief

In the Claridge Hotel, Buenos Aires, where doormen in tailcoats usher guests through the glassy marble entrance hall, retired Chilean General Luis Ramirez Pineda and his wife were on holiday, enjoying the cheap exchange rate in the Argentine capital, when Interpol arrived.

The 77-year-old general was apparently unaware of an international arrest warrant issued on the request of a French judge in November last year. He was arrested on September 15 and is now under house arrest.

Ramirez is accused of masterminding the torture of 24 of Salvador Allende's closest aides after the military coup, led by General Augusto Pinochet, on September 11, 1973. Allende died in the fighting and his inner circle were whisked to the Tacna barracks, run by Ramirez, where survivors say they were tied with barbed wire and trampled on by their torturers for two days. Georges Klein Pipper, a French psychiatrist, was among those who never reappeared.

Ramirez went on to be Chile's military attaché in Buenos Aires during the 1970s and later became president of Entel, one of the largest telecommunications firms in Chile. French judges are expected to submit an extradition request to Argentine authorities next week.

'We feel there is a cloak of impunity towards uniformed men here in Chile. So we need this to be dealt with in other countries,' said Silvia Munoz, of the Group of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Santiago, Chile.

Since Pinochet, 86, was exempted from trial in July 2001 for mental health reasons, and an appeal was rejected this year, other Latin American generals may have felt the heat was off. But the Pinochet case and the creation of the International Criminal Court in Rome, means international arrest warrants requested by judges in Belgium, France, Spain, Switzerland and Italy are piling up. Three former Argentine junta leaders are wanted in Spain and an extradition request still stands for Manuel Contreras, chief of Chile's notorious intelligence service, the DINA.

Argentina has traditionally refused extradition requests for its own citizens for sovereignty reasons. Its own military, who had been largely protected by amnesty laws for crimes in the country's 1976-1983 'Dirty War', face mobs of victims' relatives if they venture onto the streets. Photos of the disappeared still haunt the newspapers. Former junta leaders Emilio Massera and Jorge Videla have been convicted of stealing prisoners' babies for adoption by military families.

In recent months, Argentina's legal system has begun to turn the screws. After two judges ruled to reverse the amnesty law, former junta leader General Leopoldo Galtieri, 76, and about 40 other military leaders were arrested on July 12. Most are awaiting trial for the disappearance of 18 members of the Montoneros guerrillas.

'Argentina is ripe for this. There is a deafening clamour for justice in every way - from 25-year-old crimes against humanity to corruption to police brutality now,' said Victor Abramovich of the Centre for Legal and Social Studies in Buenos Aires.

'Every time the requirements of the International Criminal Court are met, Argentina will extradite,' said Foreign Minister Carlos Ruckauf, during a visit to Paris this week to rally support for his crisis-stricken country. The only time Argentina has extradited a foreigner for human rights crimes was Erich Priebke, once a Nazi SS officer, in 1995.

As Ruckauf landed on French soil, he was invited to testify in the case of Frenchman Maurice Jaeger who disappeared in 1975. Ruckauf, who reportedly signed a decree to 'annihilate subversive elements' as Labour Minister that year, agreed to respond to the French court in writing. 'I am one of those who was persecuted, not (one of) the persecutors,' Ruckauf told the Pagina 12 newspaper.

As Argentina struggles through its worst economic crisis in history, crime has risen and reports of intimidation similar to those under the last military regime have increased. On Friday, gunmen riddled the front of the house of Estela Carlotta with bullets. Carlotta, 71, is president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who have campaigned for justice for their disappeared children for 25 years.

'We received insults during the dictatorship, but never anything on this scale which is happening in a constitutional time,' said Carlotta.