SANTIAGO, Dec 20: Murder charges against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in a major human rights case can move forward, an appeals court said in an unprecedented ruling on Monday.

The Santiago Appeals Court rejected a defence motion filed last week seeking to stop the case against Augusto Pinochet, who remained hospitalized after suffering a mild stroke on Saturday. Critics dismissed the hospitalization as part of his defence strategy.

The 89-year-old retired general has been charged with murder and kidnapping in the deaths and disappearances of 10 leftists in the 1970s. "The injunction was rejected by three votes to zero, that means, unanimously," Juan Escobar, one of the three judges on the appeals court, told reporters.

The only previous time that a human rights case against Pinochet reached this stage in the Chilean court system, the appeals court threw out the charges when it ruled in 2001 that his mild dementia made him too ill to stand trial. The Supreme Court upheld that ruling in 2002.

Pinochet's attorneys say he is also too ill to stand trial in this case, which was filed this month, and others relating to some of the more than 3,000 deaths in political violence during his 1973-1990 regime.

Human rights attorneys criticized Pinochet's hospitalization as strategic. "Today it has been shown that we are correct. ... Pinochet is in perfect condition to withstand a criminal trial and we are sure he'll also be able to endure his sentence," human rights attorney Eduardo Contreras told reporters at the court house. -Reuters