SANTIAGO, Nov 30: Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet - who once said that it was God who put him in power - finds himself increasingly alone as he faces several lawsuits for alleged financial wrongdoing
and gross human rights abuses.
To add to his problems, an official report has now revealed that during his 17-year rule, thousands of Chileans suffered unspeakable torture at the hands of the military and the secret police.
It was no secret to most of Chilean society that scores of men, women and even children had been brutally abused in detention camps during the Pinochet dictatorship. But on Sunday night, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos went on national television and radio to confirm the contents of an official report released earlier this month: that 35,000 Chileans were incarcerated for political reasons during the Pinochet dictatorship and most were tortured.
Not long ago many members of the military and civilians who stood by Pinochet during his rule staunchly denied that any kind of abuse or murder of political prisoners had occurred in that time. But the report drafted by the commission on Political Prison and Torture, which gathered personal testimony over a year, has left no doubt that torture was an essential part of the way the Pinochet dictatorship acted against regime opponents.
The commission, led by Bishop Sergio Valech, has confirmed 28,000 of the cases of torture occurred and continues to work on verifying the remaining 7,000. Pinochet came to power in Chile through a coup d'etat that overthrew democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. -dpa
