Chile's Supreme Court jailed five retired military officials for
involvement in the Caravan of Death, the only case of
dictatorship-era killings for which Augusto Pinochet was arrested
in Chile.
The Caravan of Death was a military committee that travelled around
Chile by helicopter after Pinochet's 1973 coup ordering the deaths
of suspected leftist opponents.
"I'm very happy. We'd been expecting this after fighting for ...
more than 10 years since lodging our case about the so-called
caravan of death," said Hugo Gutierrez, lawyer for the victims'
families.
Sergio Arellano Stark, who headed the committee, received a
sentence of six years, a Supreme Court official said.
The other four defendants received sentences of four or six
years.
"(It is) an extraordinarily unjust sentence ... which is not based
on any real proof," said Claudio Arellano Parker, Stark's defence
lawyer and nephew.
"It is quite clear that when an 88-year-old is sentenced for events
that happened 35 years earlier, they are in no position to properly
face the punishment."
Pinochet was put under house arrest in 2001 in connection with the
case, the only time he was detained in Chile in connection with
abuses stemming from his iron-fisted 1973-1990 rule.
Pinochet, who died in 2006, never faced a full trial for crimes
committed during his 17-year dictatorship, when the government
killed about 3,000 people and tortured another 28,000 - most of
them suspected leftists.
