By SUE LEEMAN Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) -- While lawyers try to keep former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet from being extradited to Spain, Interpol has received a second extradition warrant -- this one from Switzerland.
Pinochet's attorneys urged a High Court judge Monday to order British authorities to release their client, saying he cannot be prosecuted for actions committed while in office.
The court hearing resumes today, but a judgment is not expected.
Pinochet has been held the past 10 days in a private London hospital. The 82-year-old general was recovering from back surgery when he was arrested Oct. 16 at the behest of a Spanish magistrate seeking to charge him with murder, torture and kidnapping.
Lawyers for the Spanish magistrate said a new extradition warrant has been issued, expanding the initial allegations to cover murders, tortures and kidnappings that occurred as late as 1992, two years after Pinochet's 17-year rule ended. Although he stepped down in 1990, Pinochet remained commander-in-chief of the Chilean army until March.
The original warrant cited 94 victims, including Spaniards, but lawyers later said it could be broadened to include some 3,000 people who were killed or disappeared after he seized power.
Late Monday night, the London office of Interpol, the international police organization, received an extradition warrant from Switzerland over the 1977 disappearance of Alexis Jaccard, a student with dual Swiss-Chilean citizenship.
And in Paris, a criminal complaint was filed against Pinochet on behalf of a French woman whose father disappeared while working in Chile in September 1973.
In the hearing Monday, Pinochet's lawyers argued that ex-heads of state have immunity from prosecution for acts committed in an ``official capacity.''
``The official functions of the president of Chile do not include the systematic torture and elimination of political opponents,'' countered Alun Jones, an attorney for the prosecution, as Chilean exiles watched from the courtroom gallery.
Pinochet's chief lawyer, Clive Nicholls, also argued that the extradition request should not be honored because Pinochet is not Spanish. He said Pinochet should be released because he holds diplomatic immunity, and noted that freeing him would not protect the former dictator from prosecution by an international court.
Britain says Pinochet does not have immunity and the government cannot intervene in the legal process.
Chilean officials have also appealed to Britain to release Pinochet on humanitarian grounds, saying his health is deteriorating. A Chilean military aircraft with medical personnel and equipment is on standby at a Royal Air Force base outside London to take the general home if he should win his case.
Pinochet seized power in Chile in a violent 1973 coup, ousting President Salvador Allende, a democratically elected leftist who died in the uprising.
AP-NY-10-27-98 0355EST
