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Lagos: Let history judge Pinochet family


Liniares, Chile / AFP
08/12/05

President Ricardo Lagos said Chile's courts will decide if former dictator Augusto Pinochet and his family are guilty, as charged, of tax fraud.
"Let the courts do their work in peace and let history be the judge, at it always is," Lagos told reporters in Linares, 350 kilometers (215 miles) south of Santiago.

Pinochet's wife, Lucia Hiriart, was freed on bail Thursday, but a judge ordered their son remain in custody. Both are suspected of tax fraud, stemming from US Senate investigation of some 17 million dollars the family deposited in US banks, much of it under assumed names.

Hiriart, 82, was briefly jailed on Wednesday while she was in hospital, under observation for high blood pressure and headaches.
An appeals court ordered their younger son, Marco Antonio Pinochet to remain in jail as "a danger to society," the appeals court said.

Lagos said that the 1973-1990 dictatorship "was not in line with Chile's history, as a democratic country."
"That is why I do not like to belabor those things, but rather what the agenda of the future will be," said Lagos, who was part of the elected government of Socialist president Salvador Allende, who was toppled by the military in 1973.

Lagos is the country's first Socialist president since the return to democracy in 1990. Pinochet, 89, has never faced trial for human rights violations from his dictatorship. However, his immunity from prosecution has been lifted over charges that he salted away at least 17 million dollars in secret bank accounts in the United States and other countries.

The arrest order was served against Pinochet's wife at Military Hospital in Santiago. Pinochet's lawyers say all the money in the accounts was legally earned but have offered to pay some back taxes.

In late July, prosecutors sent letters to courts in other countries requesting information on accounts in the United States, Gibraltar, Britain, the Bahamas, Germany, Venezuela, Panama, the Cayman Islands and Spain.

The ex-general has never been tried in connection with the estimated 3,000 people who were killed or disappeared while in the custody of his regime, according to official count. Another 28,000 people have declared that they had been tortured during his rule.

The Pinochet's elder son, Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, was jailed for 541 days on charges of buying and selling stolen cars and illegal possession of firearms.
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Ten years ago, he was investigated over three million dollars the army handed him to purchase a munitions factory, which never appeared in the military inventory. The government dropped charges.