One hundred members of the Chilean Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared (AFDD) carried banners, guitars, Chilean flags and an occasional hammer and sickle banner to the giant stone monument to the disappeared in Santiago city cemetery yesterday morning. There they denounced the "shameful attitude" of President Eduardo Frei during the Pinochet extradition process in Europe.
Mr Frei continued to support Gen Pinochet, said Ms Mireya Garcia, the AFDD spokeswoman. She rejected presidential claims that the government defends the principle of Chilean sovereignty rather than the former head of state.
The relatives' group deposited dozens of red roses among the rocks at the imposing monument, which has 3,189 names inscribed on its surface. There is a special mention for former president Salvador Allende, deposed in the brutal 1973 coup.
The important thing was that Gen Pinochet's crimes had been recognised as "crimes against humanity," said Ms Gladys Marin, presidential candidate for the Communist Party, countering a certain sense of disappointment at the House of Lords judgment.
Ms Marin, the first person to bring charges against Gen Pinochet inside Chile, insisted that it was only a legal loophole which prevented European courts from trying the general on all crimes committed during his regime.
"It will be a task for our courts to decide whether Pinochet must go to trial," said President Frei, shortly before he attended a meeting of the army-controlled National Security Council, to further analyse the lords' judgment.
Rachel Donnelly adds from London:
The jurisdictional sovereignty of Chile had been reaffirmed by the law lords' ruling that Gen Pinochet did not enjoy sovereign immunity from prose cution, President Frei declared.
In a statement read by the Chilean ambassador to London, Mr Mario Artaza, the President expressed his satisfaction with the outcome of Wednesday's decision, while acknowledging that Gen Pinochet now faced a reduced number of charges.
"We did not intervene to argue the defence of specific acts of the government headed by Senator Pinochet, but to sustain principles that are long-standing and that protect all the people of Chile," the statement said.