Pinochet awarded Oscar for 'Best Actor'
ON MARCH 8, the youth wing of Chile's Socialist Party held a mock ceremony in front of the army's offices in the capital, Santiago, to award a replica fake Oscar statue to a human rights activist wearing a mask of General Augusto Pinochet and dressed in a striped convict's suit.
"Pinochet wins the Oscar as best actor, and best director goes to the armed forces", Genaro Cuadras, secretary-general of the socialist youth movement declared. The ceremony was in reaction to Pinochet's masterful performance in Britain, where he was able to convince the British government (admittedly not a very demanding audience) that he was too "sick" to be extradited to Spain to face charges of torture and murder.
Pinochet arrived in Chile on March 3 from Britain, where he spent almost a year and a half under house arrest awaiting a British decision on a Spanish judge's request for extradition. Pinochet left his plane in Santiago in a manner described as "sprightly".
No longer confined to a wheelchair, Pinochet chatted with acquaintances, smiled and waved to crowds. Aided by a walking stick, Pinochet, in all the excitement, seemed to forget its purpose as he waved it about in the air.
The retired dictator's son, Marco Antonio Pinochet, said on March 8 that his father was now "suffering" inside his mansion on the outskirts of the capital and his apparent good health on arriving home was due to "a moment of emotion".
"I do not see him looking much better than when he was in Britain. Perhaps I saw him looking well the day he arrived in Chile, which was a moment of emotion on coming home", Pinochet's son, told the Chilean newspaper La Tercera.
Lawyers in Chile fighting to put Pinochet on trial stepped up their campaign on March 7, filing another six civil lawsuits against him that allege human rights abuses during his 17-year rule.
Judge Juan Guzman is probing 71 cases against Pinochet that allege his involvement in the murder, kidnapping and torture of leftists hunted down after he took power in the 1973 coup. Pinochet cannot face trial because he changed the constitution at the height of his power in 1980 to give all past presidents who had served at least six years the right to become a senator for life, with immunity from prosecution.