Ex-Chile Dictator Augusto Pinochet Dies
Sky News Sunday December 10, 09:53 PM
Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet has died aged 91. He had suffered a heart attack a week ago and was being treated in a military hospital.
"He died surrounded by his family," said Dr Juan Ignacio Vergara of Santiago's military hospital.
The Chilean government said Pinochet would not be given a state funeral and there would not be a period of national mourning.
Baroness Thatcher was said to be "greatly saddened" by the death - she was one of few international figures to support Pinochet.
Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Britain diplomatically "noted" the passing and paid tribute to the progress Chile had made in the last 15 years.
The White House said Pinochet's dictatorship "represented one of most difficult periods in that nation's history".
In a sign of how much Pinochet still divided his country, some Chileans danced in the street at the news, while others wept outside the hospital.
Pinochet grabbed power in a US-backed coup and ruled Chile from 1973-1990.
His regime was reviled internationally for its poor human rights record.
At least 3,000 people died in political violence, many at the hands of Pinochet's secret police.
Some 28,000 people were tortured in secret detention centres and hundreds of thousands of Chileans went into exile.
Pinochet spent his old age fighting human rights, fraud and corruption charges.
He was accused of dozens of human rights violations but a lengthy effort to bring him to trial in Chile failed.
His defence lawyers successfully argued that he was too ill to face charges.
Despite Pinochet's human rights record, many Chileans loved him and said he saved Chile from Marxism.
But even many loyal supporters abandoned him after it emerged in 2004 that he had stashed some $27m in secret off-shore bank accounts that were under investigation at the time of his death.
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