SUNS  4326 Wednesday 18 November 1998

Geneva, Nov 16 (IPS) - The United Nations Committee Against Torture is drafting a text to send the British government, in which it stresses that international standards must take precedence over
national laws in the case of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Committee chairman Peter Thomas Burns said the British legislation applied in the Pinochet case was at variance with the obligations arising from universal standards embodied in treaties such as the Convention Against Torture.

In a private session on Wednesday, the Committee will discuss the draft of the recommendations that it will publicly present the following day to a delegation of the British government.

The Committee's announcement is expected to come before the British House of Lords (supreme court) hands down its verdict. The House of Lords is to uphold or overturn a previous High Court ruling recognising Pinochet's immunity as a former head of state.

The de facto president who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990 has been in preventive detention in London since Oct. 16, when he was arrested in response to a warrant issued by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who wants to question the elderly retired general in connection with serious human rights violations.

But the London High Court declared Pinochet's arrest illegal, arguing that a former head of state could not be extradited, not even for crimes committed while serving as head of state. The
decision was appealed to the House of Lords.

Burns told a delegation of British attorneys and government officials that the High Court decision ran counter to the UN Convention Against Torture, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1984. The Convention, which defines torture as an international crime, is designed to keep torturers from finding refuge abroad.

The international treaty also states that if they are not extradited, torturers must be tried by the state where they are found.

Burns argued that the High Court sentence violated the fifth and sixth articles of the Convention, which grant states universal jurisdiction over the crime of torture.

When the signatory states to the Convention cannot extradite a torture suspect found in their territory, they must assume that jurisdiction and prosecute them, as in the current case of Great
Britain, Burns told IPS.

He warned that if the House of Lords confirmed the High Court ruling, Great Britain would be violating the obligations it undertook when signing the Convention Against Torture.

The Pinochet case came up Monday during the Committee's discussion of the British government's periodic report on Britain's compliance with the Convention.

Harry Carter, a legal adviser to Britain's Home Office, said the final outcome of the Pinochet case hung on the ruling to be handed down by the House of Lords, which he said was impossible to
predict.
The British official said the arguments set forth by Judge Garzon against Pinochet's immunity could be valid. But he pointed to a study by Britain's Attorney-General, carried out at the request of
an individual of Chilean-British nationality, that there were very few elements on which to base a lawsuit against Pinochet in London.

The U.S. Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, meanwhile, "strongly encouraged" the UN Committee to recommend that Britain "take all the necessary steps to guarantee that heads of state, or those acting under an official guarantee, are held legally accountable for torture..."