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You are here: Home Life in News Focus Universal jurisdiction: 'the Pinochet precedent'

11/11/2008Universal jurisdiction: 'the Pinochet precedent'

Augusto Pinochet's arrest a decade ago was an unprecedented development in the fight against global impunity.

His capture in London and the procedure, which followed in British courts, contributed to the development of the concept of universal jurisdiction. Pinochet was the first former head of state to be arrested by another country for international human rights crimes. 
Pinochet supporters © Flickr by Claudio Scheiding
There were more to follow. The first application of the "Pinochet precedent" came in February 2000 when a Senegalese judge indicted the exiled dictator of Chad, Hissène Habré, on torture charges. Other former presidents such as Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor found themselves arrested and tried by war crimes tribunals. And today, Sudanese president Omar al- Bashir faces possible prosecution over the genocide in Darfur before the first permanent international war crimes court, the ICC. Photo above left: Pinochet supporters © Claudio Scheiding

Torture claims
On 16 October 1998 the former Chilean junta leader Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (1915 - 2006) travelled to the United Kingdom to receive medical treatment. The next day he was arrested on a Spanish provisional warrant for the murder of Spanish citizens in Chile under his political responsability. Five days later, Pinochet was served with a second provisional arrest warrant from the Spanish investigating judge Baltasar Garzón, charging him with systematic torture, murder, illegal detention, and forced disappearances. 

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