El Salvador on Friday denied a request for asylum from two Venezuelan former police commanders facing charges for unsolved killings during a 2002 coup against President Hugo Chavez. After a week spent inside the Salvadoran embassy in Caracas, former city police chiefs Henry Vivas and Lazaro Forero were handed over to Venezuelan security forces who detained them. "We reached the conclusion that political asylum was not appropriate and we decided to deny the request," El Salvador Foreign Minister Francisco Lainez told Venezuelan television in a telephone interview. He said Venezuela, which supplies oil to El Salvador under preferential terms, had given guarantees that their lives and rights would be respected. Vivas and Forero face homicide charges over the deaths of several people shot and killed during an April 2002 coup that deposed left-winger Chavez for 48 hours. They deny the charges. They sought asylum in El Salvador's embassy last week because they said they feared their lives were at risk from Venezuelan security forces hunting the killers of a prominent state prosecutor who was blown up by a car bomb last month. --More 1934 Local Time 1634 GMT
