Tea and cakes with Pinochet
MichaelP
--- New Statesman (www.newstatesman.co.uk)
Does this man look like a dictator?
He reads about his hero Napoleon and watches Jean Claude Van Damme
videos. Sometimes he races remote control cars with his grandchildren.
Christina Lamb spends a sunny afternoon in Surrey with the man who
considers himself Britain's only political prisoner
When I called a cab to take me to Wentworth Golf Estate, the driver
expressed surprise that I was carrying no golf clubs, but seemed happy
with my explanation that I was visiting someone for tea. I told him
that I was a journalist, but it was only when I directed him past one
of the estate's dancing fountains to a leafy cul-de-sac guarded by two
Scotland Yard officers in a white Portakabin that it dawned on him
exactly who I was going to see.
"S'pose you'll be going to interview Milosevic next week," he growled,
as we pulled up at the tall iron gates of 28 Lindale Close, residence
of one Mr A Pinochet since last November. Feeling guilty, I gave him a
large tip and was shepherded by another Scotland Yard officer to join
Dominic Lawson, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, on the general's
patio.
It is not every day that one takes elevenses with a dictator - even a
retired one. That the encounter took place in a rose-filled Surrey
garden on a hot summer's day, at a table overlooking a lawn in the
middle of which fluttered a Chilean flag and a colourful plastic
windmill, rather than in some sombre wood-panelled room, lent an air
of improbability. I was high on morphine, too, having only got out of
hospital the previous day, after giving birth 10 weeks early to my
first child, and that added to the surrealism of the situation. Had
any of Wentworth's other famous current or past residents such as
Bruce Forsyth or Fergie dropped in, I doubt I would have lifted an
eyebrow.
Gathered on the patio were several of Pinochet's advisers: since his
arrest last October, I had often met them in smoky coffee bars of
London hotels to hear the latest word from his camp. As we waited for
the general to emerge, they shuffled nervously. Pinochet does not like
journalists and had only agreed to this encounter after protracted
negotiations and in the belief that his situation could not be worse -
proceedings to extradite him to Spain to be tried for torture and
conspiracy to torture begin in September.
There was a sudden silence as Pinochet emerged from the French
windows, then a chorus of: " Buenos dias, mi general ". I stared at
the man I had read so much about, joined protests against at
university and written about since his arrest, who now shook my hand,
smiling and congratulating me on the birth of my son.
Without his uniform and the sinister dark glasses he used to wear, he
didn't took as I expected a dictator to look. Eighty-three last
November, he was dressed in a navy suit with a high waistband, a pearl
tiepin on his silk tie. Leaning unsteadily on a crutch, a hearing aid
in his right ear and his thin white hair ever so carefully combed, he
looked like someone's elderly uncle. Adding to this impression was the
pushchair propped against the wall, belonging to the youngest of his
25 grandchildren, three-month-old Augusta Victoria, who had just flown
over with her mother from Chile. But the most unexpected thing was the
voice. Instead of the military bark that I had expected was a
high-pitched whisper.
The general took his seat, the Chilean constitution placed
ostentatiously in front of him. This, his extremely polite manner and
frequent references to God (there are Catholic icons all over the
house), took me back to an encounter 11 years before with the then
military dictator of Pakistan. General Zia ul-Haq had insisted on
pouring me tea and serving me yellow iced cakes as he lied through his
teeth, constantly justifying his actions with references to the
constitution, a document he had completely emasculated, and to Allah.
"I do not normally authorise such meetings," Pinochet began, with a
smile which did not reach his pale blue eyes and was not at all
reassuring. His advisers had told us that the current commander in
chief of the Chilean army had been on the phone the day before, trying
to stop the interview. Watching him gesture with liver-spotted hands
for someone to pour the chilled water, I was fascinated by his
fingers. They were flat and meaty like those of a butcher. We could,
he said, ask him anything.
We started on safe ground with Pinochet's midnight arrest while he lay
in a private suite at the London Clinic recuperating from an operation
on a spinal hernia. He insisted that he had been "kidnapped", and,
strangely, his main objection seemed to be that no one had had the
decency to warn him beforehand. "The least they could have done is
warn me that I was going to be arrested," he complained. "I wasn't in
England as a common bandit. I was here as a diplomatic figure and had
been welcomed as such."
His arrest had been particularly hurtful because it had happened here
in England, his favourite country, where he liked to shop in Burberry
and Fortnum & Mason, visit Madam Tussaud's and take tea with his
friend Margaret Thatcher. "As a child, my teachers and other people
who educated me always said that Chile was one of Britain's best
friends . . . I was always happy when I came here because I felt
Britain was a place where people really respected one another."
Speaking so softly that we had to lean forward to catch what he was
saying, his words often lost in the whirl of the fan, he reminded us
both of Marlon Brando in The Godfather. "Britain was famous for its
justice system," he whispered, before complaining with some
justification about the farcical nature of the legal proceedings
against him which have so far run up millions of pounds in costs and
will probably never see him brought to jail. Even if he were tried and
convicted in Spain, he is too old to go to jail.
"First there's the ruling. That's appealed, the appeal succeeds, then
they appeal against the appeal and so it goes on. It's like being on a
wheel." He waved one of his meaty fingers to illustrate his point.
"They are playing with the life of a person who is very old, giving
him hope of being freed, then taking it away again. "I'm the only
political prisoner in Britain," he added, banging his fist on the
patio table. "Bandits, common criminals, violent people are all
pardoned and allowed home." It was hard not to smile at the image of
Pinochet appealing to Amnesty International, which had documented
hundreds of cases of victims tossed from helicopters, people herded
into sports stadiums and executed by firing squads or undergoing
electric shocks and other tortures in the changing rooms during his
regime.
Had he committed crimes against humanity such as torture and
conspiracy to torture, for which, in their historic judgment in March,
the Law Lords ruled that his status as a head of state gave him no
immunity against prosecution?
Instead of the argument I had heard many times from his advisers -
that the situation in Chile under Salvador Allende had been near civil
war and that the country had been in the front line of the war against
communism - the general simply denied everything. "Never!" he replied.
"Not now. Nor do I think I could do something like that in future
because, if you read these acts which I drafted, you will see the
first thing I said was that we must encourage people's development and
provide security to anyone detained."
Brandishing the constitution, he jabbed at a section: "It is forbidden
to apply any unlawful force on any person." I thought of this later in
his office, where I saw a shelf of Jean-Claude van Damme videos.
He implied that, after he had seized power in the 1973 coup, he was
too busy to torture anyone. "I didn't have time to devote myself to
controlling the actions of others. To say that would be gross
slander!" He added: "There was so much to sort out. We had inflation
of 500%. We had to recuperate agriculture to provide food for the
people and we had to build houses because they were living in shacks
and huts. It would be too long to list everything. . ."
This version of events did not really correspond with the report of
the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, according
to which 3,197 people were murdered or disappeared during his 17 years
in power. Was he saying he had never given orders to torture or kill
anyone? His reply to this - the crux of the case against him - was a
Chilean saying. "One does not erase with the elbow what one writes
with the hand," he said, pointing again to his constitution. Yet
General Manuel Contreras, head of the DINA, the Chilean secret police,
with whom Pinochet breakfasted every morning, claims that he did
nothing without Pinochet's authorisation. Recently declassified
Pentagon papers include one stating: "Gen Contreras reports
exclusively to and receives orders from President Pinochet."
Pressed on who was responsible, Pinochet launched into a complicated
discussion about "how" and "what": "There are many things I ordered
him to do but who can say what? You see, as head of the army you
always ask 'what' not 'how' - that's up to the chief of intelligence.
Civilians don't understand."
The July sun was getting hotter and Pinochet's Chilean butler came and
served strong coffee in tiny china cups. Clearly not leading anywhere
on torture, the conversation moved on to his conditions at Wentworth.
"Would you be happy confined to the same 80 square metres for 10
months?" asked Pinochet. "Always seeing the same place, the same
people?"
A tour of the house revealed it is less luxurious than the reported
12-bedroomed mansion. With some of Pinochet's family visiting for
lunch - his favourite lamb stew, which his Chilean cook was making in
the kitchen - the living-cum-dining-room was crowded. Two of the four
bedrooms are taken up by Scotland Yard officers in case Pinochet tries
to leg it, as is a small room next to the kitchen full of surveillance
screens. There is little space for Pinochet's exercise bike, and he
spends most of his time in a cramped office, reading books on his hero
Napoleon or surfing the internet to read the Chilean press. Typical of
rented accommodation, the decor has little character - all cream
carpets and cream leather chairs - and the only personal touches are
the photos on every shelf and mantelpiece of the general, his family
and Margaret Thatcher.
Since last month, Pinochet has been allowed to move freely in the
garden, though always monitored by Scotland Yard officers and various
surveillance cameras and infrared movement detectors. His greatest joy
is his grandchildren. "I'm too old to run around or play ball, but we
have a set of remote-control cars and hold races round the lawn," he
said.
With this unlikely image of the dictator and his toy cars, we bade
farewell to the old man and left the redbrick house with the roses
rambling over the white shutters where we had taken elevenses and
chatted about torture.
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