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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 246

The project has been called a tunnel, but the San Sebastián traffic circle on the Circumvalación in south San José is really getting a change in grade for north and southbound traffic.

New structures that really are bridges will carry traffic over the east-west Circumvalacion. The job is for $3.5 million. The intersecton will be the second to have the traffic-slowing circles removed. There are two more to go.

Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes graphic

10 of the nation's bridges are on a list for repairs in 2007

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

The nation's highways are in urgent need of repair. But what about the bridges?

Of the 1,300 bridges in the country, most are 30 years or more old, said the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes. The Japanese Agency for International Cooperation has sponsored a study of bridge conditions here that will be finished early next year. The study will have an impact on a proposed program of rehabilitation of major bridges.

A vice minister, Pedro Castro, talked about the study and the condition of bridges at the opening of a seminar on bridge maintenance in Central America.

He said that 10 bridges were part of a proposed bidding schedule. The work will be done next year.

The bridges are on the Grecia-Peñas Blancas stretch of Route 1, on the San José-Paso Canoas Route 2, over the Rio Chirripó in Sarapiquí on Route 4, over the rios Chirripó and Sucio on the San José-Limón Route 32 and over the Río Torres in the metropolitan area.

Opponents to free trade treaty gather again at legislature

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

A legislative commission studying the free trade treaty with the United States will spend a day longer than scheduled in its deliberations.

The Comisión Permanente Especial de Relaciones Internacionales y Comercio Exterior was supposed to finish later today. But legislative sources said that the committee would continue through Wednesday morning.

That means the full legislature might get the document Wednesday afternoon.

Monday treaty opponents on the committee sought to link passage here with the situation in the Dominican Republic, which has ratified the treaty but the agreement has not entered into force.

Members of the Partido Acción Ciudadana want to know why. There were two motions Monday from committee members who are from this political party. Both motions sought to have either the Costa Rican ambassador or someone from the Ministerio de Comercio Exterior determine why the treaty is not in force in the Dominican Republic.

Both motions were rejected by the full committee.

After ratifying the treaty nations have to make changes in their existing laws so that the legal codes agree with what is said in the treaty. The Dominican Republic is doing this. Costa Rica has a series of bills called the complementary agenda that will be considered by the legislature if the free trade treaty passes.

In anticipation of some kind of legislative action, about a hundred people of all ages, some wearing suits and others in ripped jeans, joined forces Monday night to demonstrate against the trade agreement, known here as the Trato de Libre Comercio or, simply, TLC.

Gathered outside the legislative complex on Avenida

A.M. Costa Rica/Noel Dekking

Demonstrators maintain their vigil outside the legislative chambers even though the free trade treaty did not advance Monday.

Central, the crowd showed disapproval by blasting music, waving flags, and tapping protest signs on the police barrier that surrounded the building. Some of the organizers spoke through a loudspeaker to insure that the message was heard by fellow protesters and politicians inside. The torch-lit event did not last much later than around 8:30 p.m., with a final announcement that the protest is to start back up at 3 p.m. today outside the Instituto Nacional de Seguros, better known as the INS building.

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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 246

Judicial system seems to have misplaced a murder suspect

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

In April a man died when robbers tried to steal his vehicle in Rohrmoser. The bandits also took about 500,000 colons, nearly $1,000.

Eventually police caught up with a suspect who turned out to be under investigation for a similar armed robbery. A prosecutor took the man, Fabio Nicolás Brenes Carmona, before a judge who felt sorry for him because he had sustained bullet wounds to his legs.

No preventative detention for this man, the judge in Pavas concluded. So Brenes was placed under house arrest.

For awhile.

But when officials went to check Thursday at his home near Hospital Blanco Cervantes in San José, Brenes, his legs presumably repaired, was not home. And he has not been home since.

Officials said that citizens could call in tips to these numbers: 295-3372, 295-3373 o 295-3639.

Fabio
Nicolás
Brenes Carmona

The murdered man, who had the last names of Calderón Lee, was an administrator at Universidad Latina.

Light quake hits in hills near Jacó today in early morning

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

An earthquake estimated to be about 4.6 magnitude took place in the hills north and east of Jacó at 2:35 a.m. today.

The quake was considered light by the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center. Scientists placed the location at about 45 kilometers deep in the earth, some 28 miles. The location was 40 kilometers (25 miles) west southwest of San José and 50 kilometers

(30 miles) east southeast of Puntarenas.

The quake was felt in all of the Central Valley. A smaller quake of undetermined location took place about 11:31 p.m. Monday, just about three hours earlier.

The quake was the strongest since Nov. 30 when a 4.8 tremor rattled Santa María de Dota, according to statistics provided by the Red Sismológica Nacional of the Universidad de Costa Rica.

Ironically, Pinochet is seen as advancing human rights law

By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services

Reaction to the death Sunday of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet has been decidedly mixed, both in and outside of Chile. Human rights workers are expressing regret that the onetime coup leader was never held to account for atrocities committed during his 17-year rule, but they believe his case ultimately strengthened the application of human rights law.

Within hours of his death, pro- and anti-Pinochet demonstrators took to the streets of Santiago, and security forces were dispatched to restore order.

To his supporters, Gen. Augusto Pinochet was a national savior who prevented Chile from succumbing to communism.

Other Chileans are expressing conflicting emotions over Pinochet's death: satisfaction that a man they regard as a murderer has perished, yet sadness that a wave of lawsuits brought against him are now moot.

Isabel Allende is the daughter of the late Salvador Allende, the socialist president Pinochet overthrew in 1973 with the covert backing of the United States. She spoke in Madrid:

"It pains me that none of the accusations against him [Pinochet] could be pursued to the end," she said. "I would have preferred for my country, for its dignity, for the rule of law — that the trials against him would have gone forward. Obviously this was a despicable person with many questions surrounding him, including the inexplicable fortune he amassed."

Pinochet ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, during which time thousands of suspected leftists are believed to have disappeared in the country. Thousands of others fled into exile. At the same time, Chile embarked on a free-market reform initiative and emerged as one of the strongest economies in Latin America.

In 1988, the general lost a vote on whether to remain in power. Chile returned to elected government two years later, but Pinochet remained the head of the country's armed forces as well as a senator-for-life.

In 1998, while in London recovering from back surgery, Pinochet was arrested on an extradition warrant from Spain for alleged torture and murder. The director of the

Americas Program at Human Rights Watch, José Miguel Vivanco, notes that Pinochet was traveling on a diplomatic passport, and describes the general's detention as a landmark event.

"The precedent that was established when he was in detention in London is a turning point for the history of human rights," he said. "It was a monumental precedent
that helped going after the perpetrators of gross violations of human rights all over the world by applying international treaties that were considered for many years as 'soft law' but that could be invoked in many similar cases. And, indeed, that is what is happening now."

After months of detention in Britain, Pinochet was eventually sent home to Chile due to his deteriorating health. But lawsuits continued to hound him, and not just for alleged human rights violations. Allegations also surfaced that he had pocketed millions of dollars during his rule and funneled the money to foreign bank accounts.

In the end, Pinochet was never formally convicted of any crime and never served a day in prison. But the lawyer who initiated Spain's case against Pinochet in the late 1990s, Juan Garces, says Pinochet has made it harder for future dictators to act with impunity.

"The Pinochet case shows that international laws originating in Nuremberg in 1946 are still alive and relevant," he said. "With these laws and others that have been formulated, a person who comes to power in a country — if he uses his authority to commit crimes, he may terrorize and control society, but he must know that his impunity can be terminated by the application of international law."

Pinochet had some admirers among Western leaders, most notably former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who labeled legal proceedings against the general as a "political vendetta." Pinochet was one of the few Latin American leaders to ally his country with Britain during the 1982 conflict with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

Much that has come to light about Pinochet's rule was uncovered by truth commissions and other investigations in Chile and elsewhere, along with the declassification of U.S. government documents pertaining to Chile in the 1970s.

Pinochet, who was 91 at the time of his death, will be given a military, not a state funeral on Tuesday.

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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 246

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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 246