By Patrick Marnham and Richard Pendlebury

General Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile, died yesterday having kept one step ahead of those, both at home and abroad, who had tried for years to bring him to book for his crimes.

Aged 91 at his death, the wily tyrant achieved a longevity and comfort that were denied so many of his political opponents.

Pinochet was famous for the brutal way in which he seized power in the 1973 military coup that overturned the elected president, Salvador Allende. More than 3,000 of Allende's supporters were killed by the secret police – 'the disappeared', to use the phrase coined by the Pinochet regime.

A further 30,000 were tortured and perhaps 200,000 fled the country as the general became an international symbol of oppression.

Although among his staunch supporters he will always be revered as 'the dictator who went quietly' – in 1988, the general called presidential elections and, when he lost, stood down – he did so with tens of millions of dollars of his country's wealth salted in secret offshore accounts.

In later years, poor health – feigned or otherwise – had been used to keep the would-be prosecutors at bay.

So will history judge him as a brute or a pragmatic economic and political strongman, who rescued Chile from Marxist-orchestrated disaster?

Pinochet was born in the port of Valparaiso in 1915, the son of a customs officer. Passionately interested in history – his great hero was Napoleon – he joined the Santiago Military Academy at the age of 17.

His life was heavily influenced by two women, his mother, and his wife, Lucia, who was the strong-minded daughter of a Chilean senator.

When Pinochet married in 1943, at the age of 28, he told his young bride that with luck he might raise to be a colonel – she replied that he should settle for nothing less than minister of war.

As Pinochet rose slowly through the army's hierarchy, he wrote several books on geography and military history and in 1956 he was selected as a member of Chile's military mission to America.

But the conservative, Catholic nationalist was little known until the day in September 1973 when he emerged as one of the four-man junta that seized power from the doctrinaire Marxist, Dr Allende.

Allende's government had reduced the country to chaos. Inflation was running at 150 per cent following the nationalisation of the Chilean copper industry.

Three weeks before the coup, Dr Allende made a serious mistake in promoting Pinochet to the position of commander-in-chief of all three armed forces.

On September 11, Allende reportedly shot himself in Santiago as air force jets bombed the presidential palace, and the junta, which had secret CIA backing, began to arrest and torture as many government supporters as they could find.

The 'state of emergency' (or reign of terror) that followed lasted for three years. An inquiry later established that 3,197 men and women had been killed by the army or the secret police. Government 'death squads', allegedly organised by the dictator himself, roamed the land hunting down Leftists.

'The disappeared'. It was the Pinochet regime that established the term 'los desaparecidos' ('the disappeared') in the political dictionary.

Tens of thousands of Chilean citizens fled, in many cases pursued by police assassins, and the Pinochet regime – he swiftly rid himself of his three fellow conspiraconspira – became an international byword for brutality and terror.

Pinochet claimed that 'to defeat communism you had to use communist methods'. He modelled himself on Stalin in the Thirties and pursued his enemies abroad. Then as his hold on power grew stronger, Pinochet became overconfident.

There was a turning point in 1976 when his secret police detonated a car bomb in Washington that killed two of his exiled opponents. In response, the U.S. government cancelled all military aid. It was after this rebuff that Pinochet changed direction and dedicated his efforts to transforming the economy.

Chile became one of the first countries in the world to have an experiment with 'Chicago school' economics and it quickly achieved an annual growth rate of twice the Latin American average. Interest rates were floated, government spending was cut and foreign investment poured in.

In due course, Chile was endowed with privately-financed health, educational and social security schemes and the national prosperity has lasted until today.

Pinochet sold copper to communist China and declared an unexpected admiration for Mao Tse-Tung. He was also known to defend Fidel Castro on the grounds that he was a good nationalist.

But when Britain went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982, the British government requested General Pinochet's help. Chilean military opinion was generally pro-British, partly because of traditional rivalry with Argentina and partly because of Chile's historical ties with Britain.

It is frequently said that Chile owes its existence to the Royal Navy, and the birthday of the British naval hero and adventurer Admiral Lord Cochrane is still a national holiday.

Pinochet agreed to allow Chilean territory to be used for reconnaissance and supply, and the secret help he gave was judged to be of great value. His attitude earned him the lifelong gratitude and friendship of Margaret Thatcher.

In 1986, a Left-wing group ambushed the dictator's motorcade. He was unharmed but five of his bodyguards were killed. Two years later he felt sufficiently confident of his popularity to prepare for a return to civilian rule.

The new constitution was approved by a majority of the electorate and in 1988 Pinochet himself ran for office as president. When he was defeated he stood down as dictator but retained the powerful post of commander-in-chief.

He remained in this position until March 1998. The day after he finally resigned, at the age of 83, he took his seat as a senator for life, a post that gave him lifelong immunity from criminal prosecution.

In semi-retirement, Pinochet spent time in London, where he had regular meetings with his old ally Mrs. Thatcher.

On his final, disastrous, visit to London, Pinochet, as the head of a Chilean military mission, signed an agreement worth £1 billion with Marconi Marine for the construction of frigates at Yarrow shipyard on the Clyde.

He was in poor health, suffering from diabetes and cardiac problems, but Pinochet was sufficiently optimistic to plan a visit to Paris where he intended to pay a final homage at Napoleon's tomb.

He applied for a French visa and it was the French government's decision to refuse this application publicly that alerted a Spanish judge who issued an international arrest warrant and applied for Pinochet's extradition on 35 charges of torture and conspiracy against Spanish citizens in Chile. The British government supported the prosecution.

House arrest. From October 1998 to March 2000, Pinochet, with his wife Lucia, was held under armed police guard in a house in Wentworth, Surrey, besieged by crowds who supported the victims of his regime.

The House of Lords twice ruled he was not protected by diplomatic immunity, but his lawyers, whose costs were being met by the British government, appealed and in January 2000 they submitted medical evidence that his mental health had become too fragile for him to be given a fair trial.

As the legal battle raged, Pinochet described himself as 'England's only political prisoner'.

In March 2000 the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, released him on compassionate grounds. The case had cost the British government £15million, lost a further £60million in trade with Chile and led to the cancellation of the frigate contract.

Margaret Thatcher condemned the ingratitude of the British government 'towards a staunch friend of this country' and said that the prosecution had 'broken an old man's health, tarnished the reputation of British courts and squandered vast sums of public money in the pursuit of a political vendetta'.

Following Pinochet's return home, the newly-elected government of Chile charged him with 177 breaches of human rights and the Supreme Court stripped him of his constitutional immunity.

But his lawyers continued to argue that he was too ill to stand trial, and his support on the Right and among senior military officers remained strong.

This popularity was somewhat dented two years ago when it was revealed he had stashed some $27 million in offshore accounts.

He continued to live with his wife in an up market Santiago suburb. In January this year, his wife, Lucia, and four of his five children were indicted on tax evasion charges.

On his 91st birthday last month, and no doubt knowing that the end was near, he issued a statement admitting 'political responsibility' for acts committed during his rule.

Two days later he was placed under house arrest by a judge investigating the disappearance of two of Allende's bodyguards.

A week ago, he suffered a heart attack and his death yesterday at Santiago Military Hospital marks his final escape from justice.

'Murder squads' organized by him roamed the land As a senator, he had immunity from prosecution He had stashed $27 million in offshore account.

Конфликты в семейной жизни. Как это изменить? Редкий брак и взаимоотношения существуют без конфликтов и напряженности. Через это проходят все...

ЧТО ПРОИСХОДИТ ВО ВЗРОСЛОЙ ЖИЗНИ? Если вы все еще «неправильно» связаны с матерью, вы избегаете отделения и независимого взрослого существования...

Что делает отдел по эксплуатации и сопровождению ИС? Отвечает за сохранность данных (расписания копирования, копирование и пр.)...

Что вызывает тренды на фондовых и товарных рынках Объяснение теории грузового поезда Первые 17 лет моих рыночных исследований сводились к попыткам вычислить, когда этот...

Не нашли то, что искали? Воспользуйтесь поиском гугл на сайте: