Amnesty International welcomes Pinochet arrest order

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Amnesty International welcomed Friday's news that a Santiago judge had ordered the arrest and trial of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for alleged kidnapping.

The London-based human rights group said the judicial impunity for long enjoyed by Pinochet in Chile now seemed to be eroding.

Judge Juan Guzman ordered Pinochet's arrest in connection with alleged kidnappings carried out during the general's rule of Chile between 1973 and 1990, according to human rights lawyer Jose Galliano.

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"As far as Amnesty International is concerned, if this is true, it is potentially a very significant development for human rights," a spokeswoman for the group said.

"We welcome the fact that the wheels of justice seem to be moving in the right direction.

"For years there have been layers of impunity in Chile. At long last they are being peeled away."

The spokeswoman said that Amnesty representatives had traveled to Chile last year and told the government that "politics should not interfere with justice" in Pinochet's case.

Amnesty was a party to lengthy legal proceedings in London brought by a Spanish judge who wanted to extradite Pinochet to face trial in Madrid for alleged human rights abuses.

Pinochet was arrested in London in October 1998 at the judge's request and spent 503 days under house arrest before Home Secretary (interior minister) Jack Straw allowed him to go home on the grounds that he had been ruled too ill to stand trial.

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