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January 29, 2001 / 9:33 AM EST / AP

A Chilean judge reinstated homicide and kidnapping charges against Gen. Augusto Pinochet on Monday and said the country's former dictator was being placed under house arrest in connection with a series of political killings under his 17-year military rule.

Judge Juan Guzman, whose earlier indictment of Pinochet was struck down on appeal last month, reinstated charges involving dozens of deaths at the outset of military rule, according to Hugo Gutierrez, a human rights lawyer close to the case.

For months, the judge has been investigating Pinochet in connection with the so-called "Caravan of Death", a military squadron that hopscotched Chile by helicopter, executing 75 political prisoners in the early weeks of Pinochet's 1973-90 dictatorship.

"We are very pleased to know Pinochet has been ordered to face the courts for these homicides," said Gutierrez, adding that the judge's decision include a house arrest order.

Guzman had no immediate comment on the decision. Under Chilean law, indictments can be appealed to higher courts.

Pinochet, 85, was resting at his summer home in Los Boldos, outside the capital and neither he nor his family had any comment. He was released Saturday from a military hospital where he had been treated for what doctors described as a brief interruption of the blood flow to his brain.

The symptoms that forced Pinochet's aides to rush him to the hospital - strong headache, a brief loss of consciousness and a moderate loss of strength in the left side of his body - later disappeared, according to a hospital communique.

Pinochet has been hospitalized repeatedly in recent months for a variety of ailments, and four days of medical tests ordered by Guzman this month showed he suffers from "moderate dementia."

Under legal interrogation by Guzman earlier this week, Pinochet said the regional military commanders, not him, were responsible for the killings of the "Caravan of Death."

The families of the victims have filed dozens of criminal complaints against Pinochet arising from that case, in which prisoners were taken from jails and shot, stabbed and tortured to death.

"I am not responsible. I am not a criminal," Pinochet told Guzman according to the published text of the legal interrogation.

The interrogation was a necessary step. An earlier indictment of Pinochet was struck down buy the courts for failing to question the right-wing general prior to issuing charges.

Last week, retired Gen. Joaquin Lagos told state television that Pinochet was indeed responsible, because the chief of the caravan, Gen. Sergio Arellano, was acting as a direct representative of Pinochet at the time of the deaths.

Lagos, who was commander of the northern military garrison where most of the executions occurred, said that when he confronted Arellano, he produced a document "showing that Pinochet had appointed him s his personal delegate."