International Commission of Jurists

(ICJ)

   An international human-rights nongovernmental organization, established in Berlin in 1952 and composed of legal professionals. Six months after the military coup of 11 September 1973 in Chile, the ICJ sent a three-member team to examine the human-rights conditions under the junta led by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. From 19 April to 28 April 1974, the team, led by ICJ secretarygeneral Niall MacDermot, interviewed state officials, members of the bar, the Supreme Court, and the leaders of human-rights organizations, among them Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez. The team’s findings were published in the Final Report of Mission to Chile, April 1974, to Study the Legal System and the Protection of Human Rights and in the Supplemental Report of January 1975. The reports revealed a pattern of repression that denied basic rights such as the freedom of assembly and due process, and criticized the courts for not intervening.

   A second supplement, published in September 1976, included a copy of an “open letter” sent by five prominent Chilean jurists to the Organization of American States, which had met in Santiago earlier in the year. The letter deplored the human-rights abuses of the junta and the lack of legal protection. Among the five were Eugenio Velasco Letelier, a law professor, and Jaime Castillo Velasco, the former minister of justice and former representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.