The former Chilean dictator Gen Augusto Pinochet is to make his first court appearance in London today as a fierce legal challenge is being brought by his lawyers. They are seeking to overturn the Law Lords ruling last month that he does not enjoy sovereign immunity.
His lawyers indicated yesterday that they were also considering an application for a judicial review of the decision by the Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, that the Spanish request for his extradition should proceed to the courts.
The petition, which will be heard by a panel of three Law Lords next Tuesday, seeks to set aside the November 25th ruling on the basis that it was biased.
The Law Lords ruled on that occasion that Gen Pinochet could not claim immunity from prosecution as a former head of state.
It is understood that the legal challenge will focus on the directorship of Amnesty International Charity Ltd held by one of the Law Lords, Lord Hoffman, and on his wife's work for the charity, which supports the human rights organisation Amnesty International.
The Law Lords will reconsider the immunity issue despite Mr Straw's rejection, in his written parliamentary answer on Wednesday, of an allegation of bias against Lord Hoffman.
Mr Michael Caplan, of the London law firm Kingsley Napley, which is representing Gen Pinochet, confirmed that the petition had been lodged.
The decision had been taken after carefully considering the recent developments in the case, he said.
"We can confirm we have lodged a petition with the House of Lords that the decision of their Lordships that Senator Pinochet does not have sovereign immunity should not be allowed to stand."
Amnesty International expressed surprise at the decision to appeal against the Lords' ruling, saying Gen Pinochet's lawyers had become "desperate". The organisation claimed Kingsley Napley itself had supported the charity, donating u £1,000 to the cost of building Amnesty's offices, and that Lord and Lady Hoffman's support for the organisation was a matter of public record and had not extended to involvement in the campaign to bring Gen Pinochet to justice.
When Gen Pinochet emerges from his seclusion tomorrow to answer the arrest warrant served on him on October 16th at the London Clinic, human rights supporters and pro-Pinochet campaigners from across the world are expected to mount a protest outside the high-security Belmarsh magistrates' court.
Some Conservative MPs continued to voice their opposition to Mr Straw's ruling, accusing the government of hypocrisy by allowing Gen Pinochet's extradition to proceed while refusing to speak out against human rights abuses elsewhere.
The Shadow Foreign Secretary, Mr Michael Howard, said the government had stood "idly by" while human rights were violated in Zimbabwe and China.
"New Labour have a foreign policy which is opportunistic, not ethical. In fact it is difficult for me to imagine an approach further removed from the concept of ethics."
The Tory MP Sir Teddy Taylor claimed that lengthy and costly legal actions would result in nothing more than "anger, frustration and renewed division in Chile. The UK has no entitlement to criticise until it has successfully resolved the deep divisions in Northern Ireland."
Reuters reports from Madrid: Mr Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish judge who first requested Gen Pinochet's extradition, was putting the finishing touches yesterday to a formal indictment charging the ex-dictator with genocide, torture and terrorism.