In the words of Chilean president Ricardo Lagos, the Chilean army took an «historic step» on 5 November by admitting responsibility for human rights violations during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). In a document entitled «Chilean army: the end of a vision», General Juan Emilio Cheyre, Commander-in-chief of the Chilean armed forces, writes that «the army has taken the difficult but irreversible decision of admitting its responsibility as an institution for all the reprehensible and morally unacceptable acts of the past,» reports AP. This is a completely unprecedented step. General Cheyre's predecessors all argued that the abuses committed during Pinochet's dictatorship were the individual responsibility of officers who overstepped the rules of the military institution. This unexpected change of position comes at a time when Chile is about to publish the report by a special commission on political imprisonment and torture, which estimates the number of victims at 30,000, according to the newspaper La Nacion.