But Pinochet, the doctors say, would be incapable of following his own trial, and Mr Straw has drawn the right, pragmatic conclusion. Pinochet is a discredited figure in Chile. In the election campaign, even the right-wing candidate has failed to line up behind him. Only a coterie of the retired military still worship at the shrine. What could change all that would be death on foreign soil, supplying the general with an aura of martyrdom, giving him a heroic afterlife he will now, with luck, be deprived of.
H e returns home with few of the accoutrements of heroism.
He will, after all, have been officially declared ga-ga. Such a figure may remain an object of pity, but hardly an icon of power. He will slink away from foreign internment, after the humiliation of all that has happened to him, a broken man. Better this than the spectacle of an aged prisoner, feeble in mind and body, being hurried towards death by a Spanish court. The home secretary's decision brings the right end to a thoroughly satisfactory episode.