SANTIAGO, Chile - Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet moved closer to his first trial on human rights violations on Tuesday when Chile's Supreme Court allowed murder and kidnapping charges against him to go forward.
The retired general will be placed under house arrest on Wednesday, according to a court official.
The high court upheld a lower court decision to throw out a defense motion arguing Pinochet, 89, is too ill to be charged in the deaths and disappearances of 10 leftists in the 1970s, when much of South America was governed by U.S.-backed military regimes.
The ruling eliminated a major hurdle in getting Pinochet to trial in the second human rights case to move this far in Chile's court system. An earlier case was thrown out by the Supreme Court.
But the 3-2 ruling by the high court's five-judge criminal panel is not definitive.
A lawyer for Pinochet said he will pursue other ways to block a trial in the case known as Operation Condor, a joint effort by South America's military dictators to help each other wipe out political opponents.
Judge Juan Guzman, who indicted Pinochet in the case in December, planned to serve the house arrest order on Wednesday morning, the court official said on condition of anonymity.
The former dictator was placed under house arrest once before. He has never been tried for human rights violations although dozens of military officers who served him during his 1973-90 rule have been convicted of rights crimes.
More than 3,000 people died in political violence and more than 27,000 were tortured under Pinochet, mostly in the early years of the dictatorship.
'Common Criminal'
"We are happy in the end. This is good news for the New Year and we hope he faces justice in the courts, as he should," said Viviana Diaz, vice president of a human rights group representing family members of arrested and disappeared.
Pinochet is charged with nine kidnappings and one murder in the cases of 10 Chileans who disappeared abroad under Operation Condor.
"What should happen now is an arrest. This time he should be treated like a common criminal," said human rights lawyer Eduardo Contreras, who helped bring the Condor case.
Tuesday's high court ruling marks a shift. In 2002, the same criminal panel of the Supreme Court threw out charges in a different human rights case against Pinochet when it agreed with the retired general's defense that he was not in condition to stand trial, because of his mild dementia.
Pinochet's health has been a key issue for the courts. In December he was hospitalized for four days after suffering a stroke. He also has heart problems and diabetes.
"Now, in 2005, when his health situation is a lot worse, they find he is able enough to have a criminal process against him. This is backsliding from the point of view of human rights and constitutional rights," said defense lawyer Pablo Rodriguez.
Rodriguez said the defense will continue to try to get the charges thrown out.
Chile returned to democracy in the 1990s but Pinochet remained untouchable, shielded by conservative courts. That changed in 1998, when he was detained in London on an international arrest warrant for crimes against humanity.
England agreed to return Pinochet to Chile in 2000, and he has been fighting human rights cases ever since.
Chile has become one of South America's most prosperous nations under three consecutive center-left presidents.
But Chileans remain divided over whether he should face justice. Some Pinochet supporters believe his repressive regime was a justified battle against communism, others think the past should be left alone and feel sorry for the aging strongman.
This year, even his most ardent supporters were shaken by revelations Pinochet stashed up to $8 million in offshore accounts- wealth he did not declare to the tax agency.
