Pinochet's daughter seeks asylum in US

The elder daughter of former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet has requested asylum in the US after being taken into custody at Dulles International Airport.

Lucia Pinochet was taken into custody by customs officials in Washington because of outstanding arrest warrants in Chile, officials said.

Chilean interior minister Francisco Vidal said US Ambassador Craig Kelly had informed his government of the asylum request. A US State Department official confirmed the request and said she would be interviewed by an asylum officer as early as today.

Pinochet, 60, was indicted by a Chilean judge on charges of tax evasion and using a false passport.

Chile’s foreign minister, Ignacio Walker, said in Santiago that US officials reported yesterday that Pinochet was transferred to an immigration detention centre and the Chileans could expect a decision on her request within three days.

“We are absolutely confident that it will be rejected,” Walker said.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack had little to say about the incident, but he was asked whether the US had a special policy regarding offspring of “deposed leaders in the case that there might be political considerations”.

The US government was receptive to Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup, in which an elected left-wing president, Salvador Allende, was deposed and killed.

McCormack did not respond directly but said charges had been laid against Lucia Pinochet, and “I think that is the issue in question here, and not what her ancestry is”.

She was taken into custody after she got off a plane at Dulles airport on an early-morning flight from Argentina.

Under normal procedures, a person who tries to enter the US and is detained is entitled to an admissibility interview, said Suzanne Trevino, a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman.

“If they are not going to be admitted into the US, then they would be put on a flight back to the country that they originated in,” Trevino said.

In Santiago, Rodrigo Garcia Pinochet, the son of Lucia Pinochet, who accompanied his mother on the first leg of her flight to Washington, an overland trip to Argentina, sent to the Santiago newspaper La Segunda what he said was a letter from his mother.

In the letter she said she was “convinced that in this case they are not trying to determine the source of my father’s funds, but some people aim at defaming each and every member of my family”.

The case stems from a scandal that erupted in Washington itself.

Lucia Pinochet and several members of her family are implicated in a scandal involving the now-defunct Riggs Bank of Washington. The bank provided diplomatic banking services for decades until a Senate investigation found irregularities in its operations.

Congressional investigators claimed General Pinochet worked with bank managers to set up false offshore companies to hide the existence of about £4.5m (€6.6m) at the bank.

A subsequent judicial investigation in Chile determined that Pinochet had deposited as much as £15.6m (€22.8m) in accounts in several countries.

Last year, Pinochet issued a statement denying any wrongdoing and claiming his advisers had paid all of his outstanding taxes.