Thursday, January 26, 2006

Extradition from the United States to Chile—Lucia Pinochet

The eldest daughter of Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet is the subject of an expected request from Chile[1] at the same time that she is seeking asylum in the United States.[2]

First, we’ll address the extradition request. According to the AP, Judge Carlos Cerda has asked Chile’s Supreme Court to “approve a request for the United States to extradite” Lucia Pinochet.[3] No date is set for action on the request, and extradition requests are allowed “only if they are approved by the [Chilean] Supreme Court.”[4] She is wanted in Chile on charges of and using a , charges that are related to the prosecution of her father, Augusto Pinochet, who has also been indicted on tax evasion charges.[5]

And now we turn to the asylum request. When Ms. Pinochet arrived at Washington DC’s Dulles airport from Argentina, she was denied entry because of the Chilean charges.[6] She then asked for political asylum after being detained.[7] She is “expected to argue that Chilean courts are unable to give her a fair trial and that her family faces political persecution in Chile.”[8] If her asylum request is rejected, which many believe will happen, she is supposed to be returned to Buenos Aires, from where she departed for the United States.[9] If that happens, then Chile’s extradition request would be made to Argentina rather than the United States.[10]

A large amount of cloak-and-dagger intrigue has gone into tracking Ms. Pinochet across Latin America. On Monday, 8 people close to General Pinochet, including his wife and children, were scheduled to appear in court; when they arrived they were arrested, except for Lucia Pinochet who disappeared.[11] Chilean police, monitoring her mobile phone, tracked her to “a remote Chilean town near the border with Argentina.”[12] By the time authorities reached the town, she and her son had crossed the border, and on Tuesday evening she boarded a plane bound for Brazil, where she continued on to Washington, DC.[13] By that point, “[w]ith her escape route now being monitored by Chile, Brazil and Argentina, a frenzied round of diplomatic manoeuvres unfolded as the US prepared to receive a fugitive member of the Pinochet clan.”[14]

Ms. Pinochet’s asylum request will be the second high-profile Latin-American asylum request in recent months. At the end of , we began discussing Luis Posada-Carriles who also sought asylum. He did not receive asylum, but he also isn’t going to be extradited to either Cuba or Venezuela because of fears that he may be tortured there.

Asylum is governed (b)(1) which states that asylum may be granted to a person who is determined by the Attorney General to be a refugee within the meaning of (a)(42)(A). Under this definition, a refugee is “any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion”

The key for Ms. Pinochet is to somehow prove that the phrase “membership of a particular social group” applies to her as a member of the Pinochet family.


[1] Associated Press (via Billings Gazette), Jan. 26, 2006.
[2] Jonathan Franklin, , Guardian, Jan. 26, 2006.
[3] AP, supra note 1.
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Franklin, supra note 2.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] Id.
[12] Id.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.

posted by McNabb Associates, P.C. @ 4:46 PM