SANTIAGO, Nov. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- Former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet was put under house arrest Wednesday on charges of tax evasion and passport forgery.

    The move is seen as the prosecutors' latest attempt to bring the former military dictator to justice.

    After questioning Pinochet three times over the past two weeks, investigative judge Carlos Cerda charged Pinochet with tax evasion, use of a fake passport to open bank accounts, perjury and forging state documents, in connection with an illicit fortune of 27 million US dollars.

    A US Senate investigation announced in June 2004 that Pinochet had stashed millions of dollars at the US bank Riggs and banks in other countries. The Riggs case also implicates his wife, Lucia Hiriart, and his son Marco Antonio Pinochet.

    Chile's supreme court had ordered the suspension of Pinochet's legal immunity -- a privilege granted to all Chilean rulers to prevent frivolous lawsuits -- over charges relating to these secret accounts.

    Pinochet's lawyer said after the latest charges that he would appeal against the house arrest of the former ruler, who will turn90 on Friday, saying that the old man was being "persecuted."

    It's the fourth time in seven years that Pinochet was charged and arrested. The former dictator is also waiting to see whether he will be charged over the disappearances in 1975 of 119 leftist anti-regime activists, known as Operation Colombo.

    His poor health has derailed human rights cases until now, but court-appointed experts recently found him mentally fit to stand trial for Operation Colombo, in which 119 members of the Revolutionary Leftist Movement disappeared from Chilean jails in 1975. Their bodies were later found in Argentina and Brazil.

    Pinochet recently told Judge Victor Montiglio, who is investigating the Colombo case that he has no knowledge of the operation. The supreme court in September lifted Pinochet's legal immunity from prosecution in the Colombo case.

    Although Pinochet has been arrested for several times for accusations ranging from plotting the murder of opposition activists to illicit use of public funds, he has not yet been put under trial because of health reasons. Enditem