ABSTRACT
No consideration of the operation of the judiciary generally, and the House of Lords in particular, can be complete without a detailed consideration of what can only be called the Pinochet case (the various cases are actually cited as R v Bow Street Metropolitan Magistrates ex p Pinochet Ugarte (No 1) (1998) (House of Lords, first hearing); (No 2) (1999) (House of Lords, appeal against Lord Hoffman); (No 3) (1999) (final House of Lords decision). These cases established that Pinochet's office as Head of State gave him no general immunity to extradition for offences against the United Nations Convention Against Torture, since the date it was incorporated into UK law by the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
In September 1973, the democratically elected government of Chile was overthrown in a violent army coup led by the then General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte; the President Salvador Allende, and many others were killed in the fighting. Subsequently, in the words of Lord Browne-Wilkinson, in the final House of Lords hearing:
