By Ignacio Badal
SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - A Chilean judge on Monday formally charged Augusto Pinochet (news - web sites) with homicide and kidnapping in one of many pending cases related to human rights abuses committed during his 17-year rule, and ordered house arrest for the former dictator.
But Pinochet, 89, remained free after his lawyers filed an immediate injunction at the Santiago Appeals Court against the charges and against the house arrest order.
"General Pinochet was declared mentally fit to stand trial in Chile," Special Judge Juan Guzman told reporters. Pinochet's defense lawyers have argued he is not mentally competent to face the charges.
In an earlier human rights case, Pinochet's defense lawyers successfully kept him from being tried when the Supreme Court ruled that his mild dementia made him mentally incompetent.
"This is no more than a new episode of the most relentless persecution this country has ever seen against one person," said Pablo Rodriguez, one of Pinochet's attorneys.
The homicide and kidnapping charges filed on Monday relate to nine disappearances and one death that occurred in the 1970s as part of Operation Condor, an intelligence-sharing network of South American dictators who helped each other hunt down dissidents.
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Chilean Judge Charges Pinochet in Rights Case
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