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SANTIAGO - Deceased Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet will receive a funeral with military honours, but will not be honoured as a former head of state, a government spokesman said today.
Pinochet, who polarised Chile during his violent 1973-1990 military rule and was under indictment on human rights and fraud crimes, died today at 91.
"It has been determined that the deceased former general shall receive the honours of a former commander in chief of the Army," government spokesman Ricardo Lagos Weber said in a statement.
Pinochet's funeral arrangements presented a dilemma for Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, whose father died after being tortured in a Pinochet prison camp, because so many Chileans feel he was a criminal. Others felt he did great service to the country, saving it from communism.
Bachelet and her mother went into exile after they were arrested and held in an infamous Pinochet-era torture centre.
The Army said that a Mass would be held on Tuesday for Pinochet, who died in a military hospital, at the Escuela Military school at 11am local time (3am NZ time).
Pinochet, 91, who was diabetic and had been in frail health for years, underwent bypass surgery after the December 3 heart attack. He was given Roman Catholic last rites and his son said the surgery had brought him back from the brink of death.
Pinochet was under house arrest at the time of his recent heart attack, accused in the deaths of two bodyguards of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, who he ousted in a coup.
The charges were the latest in a series against Pinochet, who issued a statement last month on his 91st birthday suggesting he realised his death could be near.
He spent his old age fighting human rights, fraud and corruption charges
"Today, close to the end of my days, I want to make clear that I hold no rancour towards anybody, that I love my country above all else," he said in a statement read by his wife on his 91st birthday last month.
In the statement, he accepted "political responsibility" for acts committed during his rule.
Pinochet grabbed power in a coup and went on to become the best known of the South American dictators of the 1970s and 1980s. Under his regime more than 3,000 people died in political violence, many at the hands of repressive secret police.
He was accused of dozens of human rights violations but a lengthy effort to bring him to trial in Chile failed as his defence lawyers successfully argued that he was too ill to face charges.
Despite Pinochet's human rights record, many Chileans loved him and said he saved Chile from Marxism.
But even many loyal supporters abandoned him after it came out in 2004 that he had stashed some $27 million (14 million pounds) in secret off-shore bank accounts that were under investigation at the time of his death.
Five facts about Pinochet:
* Pinochet was the army's commander-in-chief when he assumed power in Chile in a violent US-supported coup that began Sept. 11, 1973, and ousted Marxist President Salvador Allende. Allende killed himself during the coup.
* Some 3000 people died in political violence during Pinochet's 1973-1990 rule, while tens of thousands were tortured and an estimated 200,000 went into exile.
* Pinochet was voted out in a 1988 referendum and stepped down in 1990, but stayed on as head of the armed forces and took a seat as a lifetime senator under a clause he had added to the constitution.
* In 1998 a Spanish judge called for Pinochet's extradition to stand trial in Spain on grounds that some of the victims of his regime were Spaniards. Pinochet was in London at the time and spent 17 months under house arrest before Britain returned him to Chile due to ill health. He also faced suits at home from the families of people killed by Chile's secret police.
* On his 91st birthday on November 25, 2006, Pinochet issued a statement accepting "political responsibility" for acts committed during his rule but said his only motive was to make Chile "a great place and prevent its disintegration."
- REUTERS
