But Pinochet is by no means alone in his predicament. Since the precedent set by the British Law Lords, former tyrants and torturers can no longer rely on the principle of national sovereignty to protect themselves from prosecution in foreign courts. Last February, citing the British precedent, a Senegalese court indicted and arrested former Chadian president Hissene Habre for torture during his brutal eight-year dictatorship in the 1980s. Habre's CIA-backed security forces killed at least 40,000 civilians and imprisoned and tortured hundreds of thousands more. Charges were dropped in July, however, after Senegal's new president appointed Habre's main attorney as his special legal adviser, then removed the investigating judge from the case.
Corruption remains a major obstacle in poorer countries.
That is why moat of the advances are coming from Europe. In August, Mexican authorities detained Miguel Angel Cavallo, a retired Argentinean naval captain, at the request of the Spanish judge who originally sought the arrest of Pinochet. Using a pseudonym, Cavallo had been running Mexico's national motor vehicle registration bureau. But during the 1970s, he had been among the officers in charge of a torture chamber through which more than 5,000 kidnapped civilians passed, almost all on their way to their deaths. Unlike Chile, which vigorously protested the detention of Pinochet as a violation of national sovereignty, Argentina has offered only customary consular assistance to Cavallo.