Chile chilly on Swiss asylum case

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On her current European swing, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet stopped in Switzerland and confronted a difficult issue: the case of Patricio Ortiz Montenegro, a Chilean fugitive and former political militant now living in Switzerland.

A Chilean court convicted Ortiz in in connection with the 1991 slaying of a Chilean carabinero, or uniformed police officer. He was sentenced to a 10 year prison term, but in 1996 Ortiz and several other militants busted out of a maximum-security prison in a spectacular helicopter escape.

Ortiz, married to a Swiss woman, was granted political asylum in Switzerland, to the annoyance of Chile, who have unsuccessfully sought his extradition.

Bachelet, a lifelong socialist forced into exile in East Germany during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, told reporters she expressed her government’s unhappiness with Ortiz’s freedom to her Swiss counterpart, President Micheline Calmy-Rey.

‘Chile is a state of law and the refuge granted to the perpetrator of a crime against a policeman during the era of democracy is very hard to explain in our country,’ Bachelet told reporters in Switzerland.

Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell and Andres D’Allesandro in Buenos Aires