Pinochet 'escaped justice', says Venezuelan vice president

Venezuela's vice president said tonight that General Augusto Pinochet's death means the former Chilean dictator has managed to escape justice for crimes committed during his rule.

"I respect death and the dead and there will be another time for judgment. The only thing that I can say is that death seals Pinochet's impunity," Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said in a statement.

Pinochet was arrested in Britain in 1998 and later extradited to Chile, where prosecutors sought unsuccessfully to bring him to trial since March 2000.

Hugo Gutierrez, a human rights lawyer involved in several lawsuits against Pinochet, said more should have been done to bring the former leader to justice.

"This criminal has departed without ever being sentenced for all the acts he was responsible for during his dictatorship," he said.

Lorena Pizarro, president of an association of relatives of the dictatorship's victims, called Pinochet genocidal and said it was ironic he had died "on December 10, the international day of human rights."