"Lawless Charades"

The trials dragged on for 3 1/2 months with the pretense of being fair and objective proceedings. Foreign observers, including former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, were allowed into the courtroom, and all 65 defendants were permitted to have counsel. So anxious --at least outwardly--was Chile's eleven-month-old junta to demonstrate its system of justice that there was speculation that Supreme Head of State Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, an army general, would let the political prisoners off with relatively light sentences. Not so. Last week four of the men were condemned to death, two to life imprisonment and 56 to prison terms ranging from 300 days to 30 years.

Only three were acquitted by the court-martial, which consisted of seven air force officers. The sentences will be reviewed by the chief of the air force combat command, General Jose Berdichewsky, and finally by Pinochet; either man could reduce them.

Condemned to death were one civilian, Carlos Lazo, 46, former vice president of the Central Bank, and three air force officers, all on grounds of subversion and high treason. The main charge against Lazo was that he supposedly met with officers in an effort to ferret out air force men opposed to the leftist government of Salvador Allende Gossens.

Another prominent prisoner was ex-Senator Erich Schnake, 44, former chief of communications in Allende's Socialist Party, who was sentenced to 20 years. According to the court, Schnake, on Sept. 11--the day of the coup--broadcast an appeal to the Chilean people for support of the Allende government.

No Challenge. The harshness of the penalties handed down last week was underlined by the highhandedness of the proceedings. Clark, in hearings before a subcommittee of the House Foreign Relations Committee, labeled the trials "lawless charades." The prisoners were tried under martial rule, which is normally reserved for offenses committed during a "state of war," though nearly all of the alleged acts took place before the overthrow of the Allende government. A lawyer who dared question whether his client had been tortured was banned from the trial. At no time were defense attorneys permitted to challenge either the jurisdiction of the court or its procedures, nor were prosecution witnesses allowed to be cross-examined.

Whatever the outcome of Pinochet's review of the sentences, the results of the trials were hardly encouraging to the approximately 6,000 political prisoners still held by the junta. They include such high officials of the Allende government as Foreign Ministers Clodomiro Almeyda and Orlando Letelier, who await trial under the same judicial process.

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