International justice too slow - Pinochet judge

MADRID, Dec 11 (Reuters) The death of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, without facing a trial for atrocities during his 17-year rule, shows international justice must speed up, the Spanish judge who tried to extradite him said today.

''International justice tends to be slow, but I think that if we all make an effort we can do it (speed it up). It's absolutely necessary,'' said Baltasar Garzon, who issued the international warrant that led to Pinochet's arrest in a London clinic in 1998.

''If not, frustrations will build up if people escape by dying first,'' he told Spanish television the day after Pinochet died in Santiago aged 91, adding that international justice will lose credibility unless it is speedier.

Garzon also noted that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had died of heart failure in March while on trial at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in the Hague.

Garzon's attempt to extradite Pinochet over the deaths and torture of Spanish citizens during his 1973-1990 dictatorship ended in failure when the British government decided he was unfit to stand trial.

But the judicial barrage against Pinochet continued in the Chilean courts and when he died in a military hospital yesterday he was under house arrest for kidnap and torture, facing hundreds of legal cases.

''To the end he was surrounded by lawyers trying to defend the indefensible,'' said Isabel Allende, daughter of the Socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende, who committed suicide during Pinochet's military coup against him.

''The courts have to continue working, the cases have to go on, families of many of the disappeared and imprisoned are still looking for their remains,'' Allende told reporters, after meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in Madrid, where she was visiting when Pinochet died.

PINOCHET'S MILLIONS Allende, a member of Chile's parliament for the ruling Socialist Party, said the dictator's death would not change her country as he had long ago lost his political power.

But she said Pinochet had left Chile with ''an open wound'' that would only be healed when he was condemned by the country's justice system.

More than 3,000 people were killed or disappeared and 28,000 were tortured during Pinochet's rule. The dictator's opponents claim his personal fortune, estimated at 30 million dollars, is made up of stolen public funds.

''It hurts me, because as a country, in the end, we didn't carry out final justice,'' said Allende, a cousin of the well-known novelist of the same name, who went into exile in Mexico after the coup that toppled her father.

Chile's courts must stop Pinochet's family inheriting his wealth and make sure it is returned to the state, Allende said.

''It's obviously embezzled money, I know of no military commander or chief that can save 30 million dollars,'' she said.

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