An Argentine judge has asked a Chilean court to allow her to question General Augusto Pinochet about a 1974 car bomb murder, maintaining legal pressure on the former Chilean dictator a day after he won a key victory.
Lawyers said today Judge Maria Servini sent a petition to the Supreme Court in recent days for permission to quiz Pinochet about the killing in Buenos Aires of former Chilean military chief Carlos Prats and his wife.
The former general was Pinochet's predecessor as armed forces head in Chile and opposed the 1973 coup that brought Pinochet to power. He went into exile after the coup and died when a bomb planted under his car exploded in a Buenos Aires suburb.
On Monday, Chile's Appeals Court ruled that Pinochet, 85, was mentally unfit to face trial in a test case in which he was charged with covering up 75 murders and abductions by an army death squad in Chile in 1973.
Legal experts say that ruling means Pinochet, who suffers from dementia, is now unlikely ever to face trial.
But he will still have to fend off other, smaller legal challenges at home and abroad over killings and other rights abuses during his 17-year rule.
Mr Hernan Quezada, lawyer for the Prats family, said the Argentine judge was aiming to come to Chile to interview Pinochet and Ms Mariana Callejas, a former member of the now disbanded DINA secret police.
Judge Servini wants to carry out the questioning in our country because that it is the only piece missing in the prosecution case against Pinochet and Callejas, the lawyer said.
Chile in May turned down a request by Justice Servini to extradite Pinochet for allegedly ordering the Prats killing.