MUNICH, Germany Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet generally knew about official acts of violence which took place under his regime, AFP quoted Pinochet's son as telling a German weekly in a report due out on Monday.
"My father generally knew, even if he did not always know the details and the individual acts" committed during his regime, Marco Antonio Pinochet said in an interview with the magazine Focus.
He called on his family's behalf for the Chilean government to stop a trial of the former dictator "for health reasons." Pinochet, 84, is "old and very ill" and a trial would probably kill him, his son said.
The former dictator "assumed political responsibility for all that happened under his command," he added.
Relatives of opponents to the military regime who were killed or disappeared while Pinochet was in power have filed charges against him, and Chile's Supreme Court lifted his parliamentary immunity on August 8.
But the trial has been postponed while Pinochet undergoes a series of mental health exams ordered by a judge and against which the former dictator has filed an appeal.