Sir, - In the week that terrorist attacks on the US devastated the lives of thousands of families, two other families in Chile and the United States were commemorating the 25th anniversary of the deaths of two men killed in a massive car bomb in Washington DC. They were the former foreign minister of Chile, Orlando Letelier, and his assistant Ronni Moffit, who were the victims of Chile's secret police DINA controlled by Gen Augusto Pinochet. US citizen Michael Townley, who planted the bomb, now enjoys witness protection in that country.
Other bomb attacks made by forces of a government supported by the US were carried out in Rome, Buenos Aires, New York and Costa Rica. The files associated with all these murders and attempted murders are held in Washington despite the efforts of Chile's courts to obtain them. International justice remains US justice.
Shortly before September 11th former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, echoing the than views of US foreign policy, had issued a strong criticism of Britain's 1998 arrest of former military dictator Gen Augusto Pinochet. He stressed the importance of condemning such international procedures, "international justice is essentially substituting the tyranny of governments for that of judges, and constitutes political harassment".
Kissinger said the British detention of Pinochet, which lasted 503 days while authorities debated his extradition to Spain to be tried for human rights violations he allegedly committed against Spanish nationals in Chile, is evidence of a dangerous trend in international politics. Perhaps he was minding his own back.
On September 10th the family of Rene Schneider, former commander-in-chief of the Chilean army, filed a lawsuit in US Federal Court against Kissinger and other diplomats for their part in his kidnapping and murder in October 1970. At the time a group of right-wing terrorists with the support of the US military attache to Chile, Paul Wimert, attempted to kidnap Gen Schneider. Schneider was shot and died three days later. He had been targeted because as an apolitical constitutionalist officer he would not have supported a coup against Chile's democratic government.
On a recent Sunday airing of the US television show 60 Minutes, Peter Kornbluh, an independent researcher from the National Security Archive, and Edward Korry, the US ambassador to Chile at the time of Schneider's death, shared evidence suggesting Kissinger and other government officials were involved in his kidnapping and murder. A view shared by the former US ambassador to Chile, the late Nathaniel Davis, and discussed in his book The Last Two Years Of Salvador Allende.
This TV programme had followed recent requests from the Argentine, French and Chilean judicial systems for his testimony regarding human rights abuses that occurred under the Argentine and Chilean military dictatorships. But Kissinger, who "condemns such procedures" refused to answer.
He had also refused a questionnaire from Chile's Supreme Court seeking information about the death of US journalist Charles Horman (featured in the Costa Gavras film Missing), who was allegedly killed with the approval of the CIA in the days following Pinochet's coup.
While the US did not issue an official response regarding any of these requests, an anonymous Bush administration official said it was "unjust and ridiculous that a respected US statesman would be accused by a foreign court in such a manner". The terrible events of September 11th will no longer allow for views that condemn international procedures in seeking international justice. President Bush is correct to declare war on terrorists but it must be a war on all terrorists. - Yours, etc.,
John T. Kavanagh, Braemor Road, Dublin 14.