Starmer appoints national security adviser who negotiated secret deal to free genocider Pinochet

Chilean dictator was arrested in London and set for extradition to Spain – but Blair adviser Jonathan Powell negotiated his freedom

Keir Starmer has appointed Jonathan Powell as his national security adviser Jonathan Powell. Tony Blair’s chief of staff for over a decade.

In 1998, former Chilean dictator and mass murderer Augusto Pinochet was arrested while visiting London, under the principle of ‘universal jurisdiction’, because he was wanted in Spain for genocide and the Spanish government wanted him extradited, for the thousands of people Pinochet had murdered or ordered to be murdered during his dictatorship from 1973 to 1990. Pinochet was close friends of right-wing extremist UK PM Margaret Thatcher, whose tenure overlapped with much of his.

But Pinochet was released in 2000, under the orders of then-Home Secretary Jack Straw, on grounds of supposed ill health – overruling a decision of the House of Lords agreeing his extradition to Spain. Pinochet flew back to Chile from a UK military base to ensure that no protests or other factors were allowed to interfere with or delay his escape.

A 2001 Guardian article revealed that the real reason for the release of Pinochet – who was proud of his good health and judged fit years later to face trial in Chile – was a secret deal between Blair’s office and then-Chilean president Eduardo Frei:

Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, was allowed to escape extradition to Spain on 2 March last year because of plans worked out over many months by Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in collaboration with Eduardo Frei, then President of Chile, according to leading Chilean sources. José María Aznar, the conservative Prime Minister of Spain and his Foreign Minister Abel Matutes, were involved in the planning.

The freeing of Pinochet was a political decision taken by the British Government,’ Hernán Montealegre, Chile’s leading human rights lawyer, told The Observer yesterday. If the medical report which Home Secretary Jack Straw used to justify the former dictator’s release had been tested in the courts, it would not have stood up, he claimed.

And the deal was overseen, or ‘liaised’ as the Guardian put it, by none other than Blair’s chief of staff – and now Keir Starmer’s national security adviser – Jonathan Powell:

Powell also had a hand, along with his brother, in an arms deal with the Saudi Arabian regime, as Campaign against the Arms Trade noted:

The Guardian has alleged that the new Saudi deal is being promoted by Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s current Chief of Staff; and his brother Lord Charles Powell – former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair’s 2001 envoy to Syria, and now a consultant to BAE Systems

Keir Starmer is an avowed supporter of Israel, which is committing genocide – confirmed by the United Nations’ experts along with a string of other war crimes – against the people of Palestine in Gaza. It has killed around 200,000 civilians in the space of just over a year, most of them women and children, maimed hundreds of thousands more and is starving 400,000 in blockaded northern Gaza. Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has requested arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and now-former defence minister Yoav Gallant. The court and its officers are facing extreme pressure from Israel’s political allies and, allegedly, attempted coercion from Israeli secret services.

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