An 'angel' faces justice.

Byline: The Register-Guard

If only los desaparecidos - the thousands of Chileans abducted, tortured and killed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet's secret police - could have been present last Monday in the Santiago court where the 89-year-old former dictator was indicted on charges of kidnapping and murder and placed under house arrest.

If they had, surely their testimonies would have added to the laughably short list of crimes - nine kidnappings and one murder - with which Pinochet was charged. The proceedings would run on for months, as victims recounted middle-of-night arrests of political activists, journalists, novelists, teachers, union organizers, socialists and communists. The sudden disappearances of men and women, many of whose families remain uncertain about their fates. The systematic torturings by Pinochet's police. The secret executions and the disposal of bodies that have never been found.

After decades of frustrating inaction, Chile's judicial system is finally beginning to demonstrate its independence and willingness to defy the old general's many supporters in the military. While he has been indicted twice before for human rights crimes and eluded trial by feigning dementia, this time it appears that Chile's judicial system will finally hold the country's "patriotic angel," as he calls himself, accountable.

The crimes that Pinochet is charged with represent a tiny percentage of the estimated 3,000 Chileans - and others, including Americans - who were kidnapped, tortured and killed during his regime. The charges stem from his involvement in "Operation Condor," a conspiracy among six Latin American dictators, including Pinochet, to capture fleeing dissidents and return them to their home countries where they faced torture and death.

For Americans, Pinochet's upcoming trial will bring painful memories to the surface about the pivotal role that the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford - and their master-plotter Henry Kissinger - played in overthrowing Chile's elected leftist government and replacing it with with Pinochet's regime.

Even if Pinochet never sees the inside of a prison, a sight he richly deserves, his mere presence in a court of law is a critical part of Chile's coming to grips with - and moving past - the Pinochet era.

The decision by Judge Juan Guzman to declare Pinochet fit to stand trial (the judge based his decision on the former dictator's lucid interview with a Spanish-language television station in Miami) symbolizes the emergence of a strong judiciary that operates outside the influence of the formerly dominant military and other branches of government.

Meanwhile, investigators are pursuing other allegations against Pinochet and other former members of his regime. Recently, the nation's military leaders acknowledged institutional responsibility for human rights violations during the dictator's rule. And last week the Congress passed a bill granting compensation to 28,000 former political prisoners, most of them victims of torture during Pinochet's rule.

Judge Guzman's ruling also sends a message to other Latin American dictators - and those in all parts of the world - that leaders who commit human rights abuses eventually will face justice. And that the voices of victims are not always silenced by death.