EDUARDO GALLARDO,
Associated Press Writer
Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator whose regime was responsible for widespread killings and other abuses, suffered a heart attack Sunday and underwent an emergency angioplasty that his son said "virtually rescued him from death."
A spokesman for Pinochet said he received last rites, and a doctor treating him described the 91-year-old's heart attack as "life-threatening." A small group of Pinochet supporters, mainly women, arrived at the hospital, some holding portraits of the former ruler, who has been under house arrest and charged with human rights abuses.
Pinochet's younger son, Marco Antonio, said his father had been "virtually rescued from death" with the angioplasty, in which the doctors introduce a catheter to a patient's blocked artery and inflate a small balloon to enlarge it, thus restoring blood flow to the heart.
"We are now in the hands of God and of the doctors. My father is in very bad condition," Marco Antonio Pinochet said as he left the hospital.
Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara, a member of the team attending Pinochet, said the angioplasty was successful, but that he remained in serious condition. The heart attack was "indeed life threatening," especially because of Pinochet's age.
Pinochet's spokesman, retired Gen. Guillermo Garin, said the former ruler was administered the last rites.
The former dictator, who ruled from 1973 until 1990, uses a pacemaker and was diagnosed with mild dementia caused by several strokes. He also suffers from diabetes and arthritis.
His failing health has helped him escape punishment for human rights abuses committed during his regime, with courts ruling his condition prevented from standing trial at least twice in recent years.
But last week, Pinochet was indicted and ordered to remain under house arrest for the execution of two bodyguards of Salvador Allende, the freely elected Marxist president who was toppled in the 1973 coup in which Pinochet took power.
The indictment came after Pinochet's 91st birthday on Nov. 25, which he marked by issuing a statement for the first time taking full political — though not explicitly legal — responsibility for abuses committed by his regime.
"Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbor no rancor against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all and that I take political responsibility for everything that was done which had no other goal than making Chile greater and avoiding its disintegration," he said at the time.
The recent house arrest is the fifth such action taken against Pinochet on charges stemming from human rights violations during his dictatorship.
The indictment alleges kidnapping and homicide in connection with the deaths of two Allende bodyguards who were arrested the day of the coup, Sept. 11, 1973. Both were executed by firing squad four weeks later, the military regime announced at the time.
Pinochet faces two other indictments — another in connection to human rights abuses and one on tax charges.
According to an official report prepared by an independent commission appointed by the first civilian government after Pinochet's rule, 3,197 people were killed for political reasons during his regime and more than 1,000 of them "disappeared."
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