Monitor: Comment on the detention of Chile's former dictator

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WHATEVER THE outcome, an important symbolic achievement has already been made. That a decrepit retired murderer - who still boasts of the butchery he conducted in violation of the free will of his compatriots - should at last be treated like a delinquent and forced to account for his acts before international justice is a lesson. Not just for him, but also for all those villains throughout the world. Globalisation starts here: there can be no frontiers to the persecution of crimes against human rights.

El Mundo, Spain

THE DETENTION of Pinochet comes just after the 25th anniversary of his coup d'etat which unleashed a wave of crimes for which he is now being accused. Some will say that this comes too late. It is not. This is firstly because he himself has made clear a thousand and one times that he would do the same again. Secondly, because the international community is now fully agreed that there are crimes that cannot be disregarded and Pinochet is accused of several of them.

El Pais, Spain

HIS DETENTION demonstrates a transgression of the norms of law agreed and accepted by the world community. London has detained a Chilean senator who was furnished with a diplomatic passport that conferred judicial immunity. This document testifies to the quality of his trip as a special mission of a plenipotentiary ambassador. This was granted by our government and communicated to the English government. Let us hope that this episode ends soon in accordance with international law, to which our country has always subscribed, although sometimes with irreparably damaging effects.

La Tercera, Chile

IF PINOCHET presumed he could travel to an EU country, knowing he was wanted in Spain for crimes against humanity, if he thought that he could use his illness to escape from the police, with a diplomatic passport that justified no mission, if he thought that neither the legal request from the Spanish judges, nor the indignation of public opinion could affect the immunity of one who enjoyed powers of life and death, he miscalculated.

ABC, Spain