MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile: Pinochet fingerprinted in right case

Like any other defendant in a criminal proceeding, Augusto Pinochet was subjected Wednesday to a police booking including mug shots and fingerprinting, albeit at his home, but the former dictator's undignified day also included being released from house arrest.

Judiciary and police officers went to the Santiago mansion of the retired general and photographed and fingerprinted him as part of his prosecution in a case involving summary executions of political prisoners.

The same judge who ordered the booking - something Pinochet's lawyers had sought to avoid because of his age and infirmity - released him from house arrest immediately afterward, judicial spokesmen said.

Judge Victor Montiglio, whose decision must still be ratified by the Appeals Court, set Pinochet's bond at $46,000, the spokesmen said.

In another development regarding atrocities committed by Pinochet's 1973-90 regime, the Santiago Appeals Court on Wednesday ratified the life sentence imposed on retired army Gen. Hugo Salas Wenzel for the slaying of 12 government opponents in 1987.

In a unanimous decision, the court also upheld the convictions and sentences imposed by special Judge Hugo Dolmetsch in January 2005 on 15 other members of the intelligence agency known as the National Information Office, or CNI, whose chief was Salas Wenzel when the slayings known as "Operation Albania" took place. The booking of Pinochet, 90, was carried out at his home in the neighborhood of La Dehesa, where he has been under house arrest since Nov. 24 on Montiglio's orders.

In the course of the procedure, which lasted one hour and 15 minutes, officials took Pinochet's fingerprints and photographed him from the front and side.

The case in which Pinochet is charged is called "Operation Colombo" and involves a plot by DINA, the 1973-1990 dictatorship's secret police, to cover up the disappearances of 119 government opponents in 1975.

In other legal troubles, in November the former dictator was indicted on charges of tax evasion, document fraud, passport violations and failure to declare assets in a sworn statement.

Indicting Judge Carlos Cerda concluded that Pinochet had amassed a $26 million fortune after stepping down from office and failed to pay some $10 million in taxes. In the "Albania" case, Dolmetsch acquitted 11 other defendants, but in Wednesday's ruling the Appeals Court overturned the acquittals of three of them and sentenced them to five years and a day in prison each on murder charges.

In the "Albania" slayings of June 1987, CNI officers gunned down twelve members of the leftist Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, or FPMR, which had taken up arms against the dictatorship, at different points in Santiago.

The military regime said the 12 had died in "clashes" with authorities and described the victims, including two women, as terrorists.

The judicial investigation established that the leftists, all of them under 30, had been taken into custody and later shot in cold blood.