While the British press speculate on the imminent release of Gen Augusto Pinochet, legal observers reject any possibility that the dictator might stand trial in Chile, writes Michael McCaughan in Buenos Aires.
Since Gen Pinochet was arrested, Chilean socialist deputies have received death threats, the army has called two meetings of the shadowy National Security Council and urgent senate business has been put on hold, clear signals that he still has a decisive voice in Chile's political affairs.
"I can assure you that the cases are going to be prosecuted," said Chile's Foreign Minister, Mr Jose Insulza, this weekend, referring to 14 lawsuits opened against Gen Pinochet at home. "The Catalans will give up speaking their own language before Pinochet stands trial in Chile," cautioned one Chilean lawyer, searching for an appropriate metaphor.
Meanwhile in Chile, after a decade spent justifying the mass slaughter which followed the 1973 coup, Chile's army leaders are suddenly queuing up before the press to offer apologies and assist Judge Juan Guzman, who surprised the country by taking on several lawsuits against Gen Pinochet in January this year.
"We must shoulder the blame for the excesses committed, not General Pinochet," said former Gen Eugenio Videla, who begged to be allowed testify against himself.
It is widely believed that Gen Pinochet's followers have struck a deal with British authorities and the Chilean government, promising the dictator's retirement from public life in return for his release from British custody.
The principal case, in the hands of Judge Guzman, was taken by Mrs Gladys Marin, secretary general of Chile's Communist Party, whose husband was detained and disappeared by Gen Pinochet's troops. Mrs Marin formally charged the general with "genocide, kidnapping and the illegal burial of bodies" in a Santiago court last January. Months earlier Gen Pinochet had Mrs Marin imprisoned for defamation after she called him a "genocide".
Some 800 lawsuits have been filed by citizens since 1993, clearly annoying Gen Pinochet who continues to publicly justify the brutal coup. "We'll do it again if necessary," he said, mocking protesters who took to the streets during the 1996 coup anniversary celebrations.
Chile's transition from dictatorship to democracy came to a sharp halt once the general secured legal locks and guarantees that prevented civilian tampering with army privilege. If the legal locks aren't enough, then the threat of force is waiting just around the corner.
In 1995, helicopters buzzed over the capital after Gen Pinochet's former police chief, Mr Manuel Contreras, was convicted of ordering the assassination of a political opponent in Washington, DC. Contreras went to jail only after Gen Pinochet built him a special army-controlled prison and negotiated a pay rise for the whole army.
The only way in which Gen Pinochet could possibly end up behind bars in Chile would be via a national referendum and a change to the nation's constitution.
Mr Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas division of Human Right's Watch noted that the most important principle of the Pinochet case is that a high court has ruled that torture and murder "do not qualify as legitimate acts of a head of state" and thus do not confer immunity to foreign leaders in Britain.