Former Chilean dictator Mr Augusto Pinochet was hospitalized on Saturday with a possible stroke, ahead of an expected court ruling on Monday on whether he should be tried in a human rights case.
Mr Pinochet, who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, a period when more than 3,000 people died in political violence and more than 27,000 were tortured, is often admitted to hospital when Chile's courts are about to rule in one of the dozens of human rights cases against him.
Pinochet, 89, suffers from diabetes and frequent small strokes. He is increasingly irrelevant in Chilean politics after 14 years of center-left, democratically elected presidents, but he has long been a target of rights activists.
"This morning he was eating breakfast and felt bad. The doctor got worried and decided to take him to the hospital, where he is being examined, because it could be a stroke," retired Gen Guillermo Garin, Pinochet's spokesman, told local media.
Earlier this month Judge Juan Guzman brought formal charges of murder and kidnapping against Pinochet for the deaths and disappearances of 10 people in the 1970s under Operation Condor, which was a coordinated effort between different South American military dictatorships to suppress dissidents.
Guzman decided to charge Pinochet despite medical reports that showed his mild dementia has worsened in recent years. Two years ago, Chile's Supreme Court ruled Mr Pinochet could not face trial in another human rights case, because of his mental frailty.
Mr Pinochet's lawyers have filed an injunction against Guzman's ruling, and the Santiago Appeals Court is expected to rule on that on Monday.
Mr Pinochet has never stood trial in any human rights case, though he has been stripped of his immunity from prosecution in three separate cases, the latest being that concerning Operation Condor.