Chile's ex-dictator Pinochet gets military funeral

SANTIAGO: Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose brutal Cold War military regime presided over mass torture and murder, received a full military funeral on Tuesday after the government denied him state honours.   

Some 7,000 family, friends and supporters attended the funeral at the Santiago Military School, where they hissed at the arrival of Defense Minister Vivianne Blanlot as the lone representative of the government of President Michelle Bachelet. Bachelet, whose father was tortured and died in jail under the 1973-1990 Pinochet regime, and who herself was tortured alongside her mother, rejected a formal state funeral for the ex-dictator after he died Sunday due to complications from a heart attack.   

The late former dictator's daughter Lucia Pinochet Hiriart defended his deeply divisive rule as what she saw as having "lit the lamp of freedom" in the country in the wake of the September 11, 1973 army coup against elected socialist president Salvador Allende. Her father rose to power in the coup.   

"The international media do not understand how hundreds of thousands of our countrymen can voluntarily show their gratitude and affection for someone whom the press has described in the worst terms and epithets that can be used for a human," she said to applause at the rites.   

Still, army chief General Oscar Izurieta, presiding over the funeral, told the mourners his legacy should be left to history to decide.   

"We will leave it to history to examine objectively and justly his role in the political, economic and social events" during his regime, Izurieta said in his eulogy.   

Izurieta referred to the 1973 coup as "the hardest decision for a soldier to assume the high responsibilities amid a national institutional crisis."   

As the funeral took place, several thousand people rallied outside La Moneda, the Santiago presidential palace, to protest Pinochet's legacy and pay homage to the government of Allende, who died during the 1973 coup.   

"We want to let president Allende know that the Chilean people are here, at the time of the death of the dictator," said Viviana Diaz of the Association of Families of Missing Detainees.   

During his long rule, Pinochet was accused of presiding over the systematic torture and murder of opponents. At least 3,000 people were killed or disappeared during his regime.   

Despite numerous cases brought to court, he fended off prosecution all the way until he died by first claiming immunity based on his political status, and then claiming he was too unhealthy to be tried.   

The funeral on Tuesday, presided over by military Bishop Juan Barros Madrid, was marred by hissing upon the arrival of Blanlot, who was not dressed in the customary black for a funeral and did not greet Pinochet's family as she took a seat in the front row of mourners.   

The former general's coffin was carried in on a wagon, followed by a riderless horse, symbolizing the death of a soldier. Lucia Hiriart, Pinochet's wife, was in tears as she was presented with the Chilean flag which had covered his coffin during the rites. A cadet also removed from the coffin his military cap and jacket and the sword of Chilean liberator Bernardo O'Higgins.   

After the funeral ended Pinochet's body was loaded onto a helicopter to be taken to the coastal resort city of Concon, where he will be cremated in a private family ceremony, the ashes to be handed over to his family.   

The ex-dictator's death threw a spotlight on painful divisions in Chile's society that have never disappeared since he left power.   

Never tried for alleged crimes arising from his 17 years in power, news of his death led to celebrations in the streets of the capital, but also rioting that left 99 people arrested.   

Denied the three days of mourning and flags at half-mast customary for a former head of state, Pinochet's body was taken Monday to the Military School where over 60,000 people stood in line to pay their last respects.   

"He was the best president Chile ever had," said an old woman under a parasol.   

But local media reported that at least one person spat on the former general in his casket, while three youths made a Nazi-style salute.   

Pinochet's youngest son, Marco Antonio, expressed anger earlier that his father was not given a state funeral. Augusto Pinochet "was totally committed to his country and took it out of indescribable chaos," he said.   

While the charges against Pinochet will now likely never be heard in court, his wife and children still face corruption and tax evasion charges for allegedly stashing millions of dollars in state funds in accounts outside Chile, including in Washington's former Riggs Bank.