Dad 'raped' chess girl

By Julie Moult July 28, 2006

THE father of tragic teenage chess prodigy Jessie Gilbert is facing trial accused of raping her, it was revealed last night.

Tormented Jessie, 19, apparently threw herself from the eighth floor of a hotel in the Czech Republic on Wednesday.

It emerged last night her banker father Ian Gilbert, 48, has been charged with SEVEN counts of rape and two of indecent assault. His dead daughter is believed to be just one of his alleged victims.

Talented Jessie was competing in an international chess tournament when she fell to her death.

She is said to have been traumatised by the criminal proceedings hanging over the family.

Last night Surrey Police confirmed Gilbert was on bail awaiting trial at Guildford Crown Court on August 21.

The teenager, who hoped to study medicine at Oxford University, had faced the ordeal of being interviewed in a rape suite and possibly underwent medical tests.

She may have endured the trauma of having to give evidence against her own dad.

Czech police captain David Krkada said: ''She was afraid and had bad feelings about it.'' Gilbert, of Woldingham, Surrey, who works for Royal Bank of Scotland, has split from his wife Angela, 52.

On the night of Jessie’s death, she had allegedly been drinking heavily with her room-mate and best pal Amisha Parmer, 14, at the Hotel Labe in Pardubice.

Mr Krkada said: ''At some point, the younger girl, who was not used to drinking, became ill and went to the bathroom.

''When she emerged, Jessie had gone – but Amisha didn’t realise what had happened.

Jessie has a history of sleepwalking so she assumed she had wandered off in her sleep or just gone for a walk to get some fresh air.

''This was about midnight. But at 3.30 am Amisha was woken to be told her friend had died. She had fallen to the ground.

''It is still not certain what happened. It could have been an accident. But there are several factors which suggest she probably jumped.

''She was on medication for depression and we found prescription pills in her room.

''There was also a lot of trouble in her family. Her parents split up and her father is facing a serious court case.''

Set 3. Augusto pinochet’s death

Article 1. NEWS REPORT (Quality Newspaper)

Augusto pinochet, dictator who ruled by terror in chile, dies at 91

By Jonathan Kandell

Published: December 11, 2006 New York Times

G en. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the brutal dictator who repressed and reshaped Chile for nearly two decades and became a notorious symbol of human rights abuse and corruption, died yesterday at the Military Hospital of Santiago. He was 91.

Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara, head of the medical team that had been treating him, said he died at 2:15 p.m., a week after being hospitalized and undergoing angioplasty and another operation after an acute heart attack. Dr. Vergara said his condition degenerated sharply yesterday morning, and he was moved to the intensive care unit, where he died.

General Pinochet seized power on Sept. 11, 1973, in a bloody military coup that toppled the Marxist government of President Salvador Allende. He then led the country into an era of robust economic growth. But during his rule, more than 3,200 people were executed or disappeared, and scores of thousands more were detained and tortured or exiled.

General Pinochet gave up the presidency in 1990 after promulgating a Constitution that empowered a right-wing minority for years. He held on to his post of commander in chief of the army until 1998. With that power base, he exerted considerable influence over the democratically elected governments that replaced his iron-fisted rule.

He set limits, for example, on economic policy debates with frequent warnings that he would not tolerate a return to statist measures, and he blocked virtually all attempts to prosecute members of his security forces for human rights abuses. Through intimidation and legal obstacles, General Pinochet sought to ensure his own immunity from accountability and in fact was never brought to trial. But in an astonishing turn of events nearly a decade after he stepped down, he was detained in Britain and then, on his return to Chile, forced to spend his retirement years fighting a battery of legal charges relating to human rights violations and personal corruption.

During those last years he lived in near seclusion, mostly at his home in Bucalemu, about 80 miles southwest of Santiago, scorned even by many of his former military colleagues and conservative civilian ideologues. Many were disillusioned by revelations that he held, at the least, $28 million in secret bank accounts abroad.

''The humiliation Pinochet has gone through is probably a better outcome than any trial could have achieved,'' said Jose Zalaquett, Chile’s foremost human rights lawyer.

He won grudging international praise for some of the free-market policies he instituted, transforming a bankrupt economy into the most prosperous in Latin America. They included removing trade barriers, encouraging export growth, privatizing state-owned industries, creating a central bank able to control interest and exchange rates without government interference, cutting wages sharply, and privatizing the social security system. Many elements of the so-called Chilean model were widely emulated in the region.

But by the time of his death, even some of those economic victories had been called into question. The privatizing of Chile’s social security system, in particular, has come under attack as unjust and is undergoing revision. And across Latin America, many of the countries that had adopted similar reforms are reversing some of them, responding to a growing wave of popular, leftist anger over untrammeled foreign competition and unequal distribution of wealth.

Article 2. NEWS REPORT (Tabloid Newspaper)