Chilean court okays Pinochet trial

The Santiago Appeals Court denied a defence motion filed last week seeking to stop the case against 89-year-old retired Gen. Pinochet, who was still in the hospital after hospital officials said he suffered a mild stroke on Saturday.

Critics said the hospital stay was a Pinochet strategy to evade charges of murder and kidnapping in the 1970s disappearances of 10 leftists under Operation Condor, a South American spy network aimed at eliminating political opponents to military leaders.

"The injunction was rejected by three votes to zero, that means unanimously," Juan Escobar, one of the three judges on the appeals court, told reporters.

The only previous time a human rights case against Pinochet reached this stage in Chile's courts, the appeals court threw out the charges with a 2001 ruling that his mild dementia made him too ill to stand trial.

The Supreme Court upheld that ruling in 2002.