Both the anti-Pinochet crowd that had gathered outside the House of Lords in London and the Pinochet supporters at the Pinochet Foundation in Santiago, Chile, cheered and celebrated soon after the seven Law Lords gave the gist of their judgments live on radio and television. Both pro-Pinochet and anti-Pinochet groups have claimed "victory" when they commented on the third -- not necessarily the last -- judgment the Law Lords have given in less than four months regarding Pinochet. What in the name of the (Law) Lord(s) does this latest decision signify?
On Nov. 25, 1998, a panel of the judicial committee of Britain's House of Lords, by a 3-2 vote, decided that Gen. Augusto Pinochet, as a former Chilean head of state, did not have "sovereign immunity" from the British and Spanish judicial processes.
Soon after this landmark decision, Pinochet's lawyers appealed to another committee of the Law Lords arguing that the decision should be vacated because one of the Law Lords in the majority in the first case, Lord Hoffman, was an unpaid director of Amnesty International. Amnesty had made representations to the first panel of Law Lords, arguing that Pinochet should not be accorded sovereign immunity. Pinochet's lawyers argued that the judgment in Pinochet I -- in which Lord Hoffman was in the majority -- was tainted by the appearance of bias and should therefore be vacated. On Jan. 15, a panel of five Law Lords unanimously set aside the the decision and a fresh hearing took place before an entirely new panel of Law Lords.