Mental Tests For Pinochet

A judge on Monday ordered Gen. Augusto Pinochet to undergo medical tests to determine whether the former dictator is mentally fit to stand trial on human rights charges stemming from the killing of political dissidents during his seventeen-year reign.

Judge Juan Guzman said the 84-year-old Pinochet must be examined by state doctors within 30 days.

The Supreme Court last month stripped Pinochet of immunity so he can be tried in a complaint involving the slaying of 72 political prisoners.

The episode, in which a traveling military squad killed the detainees soon after Pinochet overthrew Marxist President Salvador Allende, became notorious as the "caravan of death."

The tests should be conducted "as soon as possible" to avoid further delays, plaintiff's lawyer Hugo Gutierrez said.

Pinochet's lawyers did not immediately comment. However, while arguing that his ill health prevents him from properly organizing his defense, they insist his ailments are physical, not mental.

"My general is not crazy," one of his closest aides, retired Gen. Guillermo Garin, said recently.

Chile's law does not exempt ill people from legal responsibility unless they are officially declared mad or demented.

Pinochet, on a visit to the nearby resort of Vina del Mar in early September, told reporters his "health is good, the spirits are fine."

Pinochet suffers from diabetes, has a pacemaker and suffered three mild strokes during his 16-month house arrest in London, which ended last March.

He had been arrested in London on a warrant by a Spanish judge wanting to try him on human rights charges. He was released after British doctors said he was mentally and physically unfit to stand trial.

According to an official report, 3,197 people were killed or disappeared for political reasons during Pinochet's regime.

Pinochet was the head of Chile's armed forces under Allende, a socialist whose rise to power the Nixon administratin tried to thwart by influencing the media and trying to foment a coup in 1970, according to newly released CIA files.

In September 1973, Allende was overthrown in a separate coup. He is believed to have committed suicide during the coup's final hours. Pinochet was originally installed as one of four rotating presidents, but quickly consolidated power. He ruled until 1990.