A Chilean judge will question former dictator General Augusto Pinochet next week about his role in the murders of 19 people who opposed his rule, a high-level court source said.
The court-ordered questioning will be the first time the 88-year-old retired general is forced to testify before a judge in a human rights case since the Supreme Court ruled in 2001 he was mentally incompetent to stand trial in a different human rights case.
The country's highest court stripped General Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution last Thursday in a case involving the deaths of 19 Chileans in the mid-1970s as part of Operation Condor, a joint effort by South American dictatorships to wipe out dissidents.
Some 3,000 people were killed or disappeared during the dictator's 17-year military rule, which ended in 1990.
As a former president he enjoys immunity from prosecution in hundreds of criminal suits filed by victims' families. His immunity was removed only in the Operation Condor case but it has raised new hopes among other victims and family members that Pinochet's untouchability in the courts was eroding.
Judge Juan Guzman, who is investigating Operation Condor and other human rights cases, will question the former strongman in his home on Monday. The judge has also requested a list of psychiatric experts from two Chilean universities and the World Health Organization, suggesting that he will order new medical exams after Pinochet testifies.
Previous court-ordered medical exams showed Mr Pinochet suffers from mild dementia caused by minor strokes that restrict his ability to reconstruct past events and properly assist in his defense.
Mr Pinochet's attorneys plan to use the mental health defense again in the Operation Condor case, but the strategy is seen as weaker than it used to be because Mr Pinochet gave a lucid television interview last December.
Also, court sources have said that Mr Pinochet was coherent earlier this month when he answered questions from another judge investigating his multi-million-dollar secret bank accounts in Washington, DC-based Riggs Bank.