Lawyers acting for Gen Augusto Pinochet in London have asked the Attorney General to investigate whether the leaking of Gen Augusto Pinochet's confidential medical report in Spain constitutes a contempt of court, as the entire case descended into claim and counter-claim yesterday.
The approach came a few hours after details of the medical report, which stated that the former Chilean dictator was physically capable of attending a trial but not mentally capable of taking part in it, were published in the Spanish newspapers, El Mundo and ABC. The report was also made available on ABC's website.
Gen Pinochet suffers from 16 different illnesses including diabetes, brain damage and Parkinson's disease, according to the leaked report, and is therefore unfit to stand trial. The report confirmed that while he was "physically fit" to face trial, his mental health and brain damage would make it difficult for him to understand court proceedings or to instruct his legal team. In addition, the prolonged stress of a trial was likely to cause further deterioration in his mental and physical condition, the report claimed.
The report, signed by three leading British doctors on January 6th, was released on Tuesday after the High Court in London ruled that the ex-general's medical condition should be made known to the governments of the four countries - Spain, Belgium, France and Switzerland - which have demanded his extradition to face charges of murder, torture and kidnap. Last month the British Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, said that he was "mindful" to free him on health and humanitarian grounds on the basis of the confidential medical report.
The document says that Mr Pinochet suffered a series of strokes in September and October last year which had left him with brain damage.
It says that both his short and long term memories are deficient, that he has only a limited ability to understand complex sentences and questions and is therefore incapable of processing spoken information or of expressing himself audibly and intelligibly. But contrary to reports from his family, the doctors say they found no sign of clinical depression.
The report, which was supposed to remain confidential, arrived in Madrid at 7 p.m. on Tuesday evening, and within 90 minutes its text had been delivered to the office of Judge Baltasar Garzon, the examining magistrate who requested Gen Pinochet's arrest in London in October 1998. About the same time the judge received the report it was landing on the desks in the offices of ABC and El Mundo, both newspapers which have repeatedly shown their opposition to trying Gen Pinochet in Spain. Other papers more sympathetic to Judge Garzon's case were not recipients of the leaked document.
Questions are now being asked as to where the leak occurred. A Spanish Foreign Ministry spokesman denied yesterday that the ministry was to blame. He said that it was "very difficult, not to say impossible" that the leak came from them.
While the Spanish government has followed all the legal requirements of Judge Garzon's extradition demands, it has done so reluctantly and has made no secret of the fact that a trial of the former dictator in Spain could cause problems between two close allies. Chile is one of Spain's largest trading partners in South America. A trial could even drag up events in Spain during the Franco period which Madrid prefers to keep buried.
Mr Joaquin Almunia, leader of the opposition, condemned the leak as "indecent" and called on the Prime Minister, Mr Jose Maria Aznar, to answer the allegations that it was a government action.
"The Prime Minister should give an account to the Spanish people and to the millions of democrats from Chile and other parts of the world who have been shocked by a government which claims to be democratic but which has taken the side of Augusto Pinochet," he said.
In London the former Conservative chancellor, Lord Lamont, expressed surprise at the speed with which the medical report was leaked, although he was not surprised.
"What has happened is quite disgusting and entirely predictable from our Spanish friends. It's only happened 24 hours quicker than I expected," he said.
Chile's government and supporters of Gen Pinochet yesterday criticised the leaking. "They are playing with the honour, the dignity and the privacy which is a human right," Mr Luis Cortes Villa, head of the Pinochet Foundation, which doles out military scholarships and polishes the general's image, said.