-Caveat Lector- >From Agence France Presse (via Yahoo!) Pro- and anti-Pinochet camps protest outside House of Lords LONDON, Jan 18 (AFP) - A noisy crowd of supporters and opponents of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet held rival demonstrations on Monday as the House of Lords began to reconsider the 83-year-old general's fate. Outside the Palace of Westmister, where the proceedings are taking place, 200 supporters and 70 opponents of the former junta chief shouted slogans and brandished placards, kept apart by police barricades. "Free Free Pinochet" shouted his supporters, brandishing images of the junta chief as 100 large Chilean flags fluttered in the wind above them. On the other side of the police lines, placards were held aloft with the slogans: "We want justice" and "Pinochet: immunity equals impunity" as the chant rang out: "Extradite Pinochet" and "Garzon amigo (friend)". Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, whose extradition request against Pinochet for terrorism, torture and genocide sparked off what became a major legal and political wrangle, had earlier entered the building to attend the hearing. At one point, a scuffle broke out after a supporter of Pinochet began shouting insults at the other camp, prompting someone to rush over and throw a projectile in his direction. Police intervened and led the two men away. A number of placards depicted Pinochet and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher -- who has lobbied for his release -- both in military uniform and dripping in blood. And protestors held up a 20-metre long banner with white silhouettes of some of 3,000 people who "disappeared" under Pinochet's ruthless 1973-1990 rule. One of the anti-Pinochet protestors, a Chilean exile Jimmy Bell, 40, told AFP: "The only way people are going to get truth and justice is a trial in Spain". The exile, who has been in daily protest since Pinochet's arrest on October 16, said his father had been imprisoned for two years in Chile and that his adopted brother had "disappeared". He said he was confident the House of Lords, whose original ruling that Pinochet should face extradition was annulled because of one of the judges' links to human rights group Amnesty International, would make the same decision. "The circumstances have not changed. Why should they come to a different conclusion unless there is a political and economic pressure on them? That would mean Pinochet getting away with murder," he said. But a pro-Pinochet demonstrator, Tomas Ruiz, 21, who flew in the night before from Chile to offer his support to the ex-dictator, said the 3,000 deaths had been a necessary evil to save his country from worse violence. "If you did not do what he did, there would have been more dead, not just 3,000," he told AFP. "Those people there want revenge. They want another civil war," Ruiz said, pointing at the rival demonstrators. "We want our peace process. We feel Spain and England are taking away the chance for our own peace process," he insisted. >From Reuters Monday January 18 1:17 PM ET Spain Puts Pinochet Trial Case To UK Court <Picture: Reuters Photo> Reuters Photo By Gerrard Raven LONDON (Reuters) - Many crimes for which Spain wants to try former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet took place before he became head of state, so he cannot enjoy immunity from prosecution in these cases, a lawyer for Madrid said Monday. Alun Jones was opening a rehearing by Britain's highest court, the House of Lords, of whether proceedings by Spain to extradite Pinochet to face charges of murder, kidnap and torture can go ahead. Pinochet, who has been held in Britain since October, argues he is immune from prosecution as a former head of state in respect of the thousand of murders and disappearances which occurred when he held power between 1973 and 1990. But Jones claimed that there was evidence that Pinochet conspired with other senior military officers to plan a campaign of torture of their political enemies before the military coup which brought them to power. Football stadiums, ships and other facilities had been identified as places into which the victims could be herded immediately power was wrested from Salvador Allende. Dozens of Chilean naval officers unsympathetic to Pinochet were tortured on his orders the previous month, he added. And he claimed that Santiago, in its written submissions to the court, had effectively admitted that Pinochet did not formally become head of state until nine months after the coup. ``The government of Chile is offering evidence in carefully chosen words that the defendant was not head of state until June 1974, and they are only asserting immunity in respect of acts taken as head of state,'' Jones said. Submissions by Jones took up the whole of the first day of the hearing, which is expected to last about a week. In November, a five-strong panel of law lords ruled against immunity for Pinochet by three to two. The court set aside this ruling after it emerged that one of the judges, Lord Hoffmann, was involved with human rights watchdog Amnesty International. With Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish judge who has applied for Pinochet's extradition, looking on, Jones claimed Pinochet was accused of crimes of such gravity he could not expect immunity. They included the use of flamethrowers to torture opponents, crushing of their bones, their rape and the use of dogs to commit sexual acts with them as well as attempts by Chilean security forces to murder people in several foreign countries. ``The sheer depravity of the tortures alleged at the instigation of the respondent (Pinochet) make it impossible to argue that they could be done in furtherance of the functions of head of state,'' he said. Jones, addressing a new seven-judge panel of law lords, said: ``The torturer is now to be regarded as the equivalent of the slave trader or the pirate. He is the universal enemy of civic society and human rights.'' If the judges rule in Pinochet's favor, he is expected to return home on a Chilean air force plane which is already waiting at a military airport outside London. But if they rule against him, the 83-year-old general could find himself an unwilling guest in Britain for months as the process to extradite him makes its way through the courts. Pinochet is currently living under police supervision at a mansion in the countryside west of London. A newspaper quoted him as saying he was resigned to dying in Britain. A group of 22 Chilean lawyers issued a joint statement saying Chile's national sovereignty was not being affected or infringed by bringing Pinochet to justice. ``If there is something that really has affected our national sovereignty and dignity, it is precisely the systematic violations of human rights during his dictatorship,'' they said. 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