José Antonio Kastfounder of the opposition Chilean Republican Party and former presidential candidate, asked President Gabriel Boric this Saturday to decree the Site status after the shooting death of three police officers in the southern part of the country, an event for which he also demanded that his security team be dismissed.
“The time has come to end the great. The President of the Republic, Gabriel Boric, must decree a state of siege today,” Kast demanded first, in what he described as “surely the saddest anniversary of the noble institution of the Carabineros of Chile.”
Boric “must summon the Armed Forces and the Police Forces today and “Pursue these murderers to the point of exhaustion, to lock them up, condemn them and apply the full rigor of the Law.”added the opposition leader, although he assured that “that is not enough.”
Thus, the political leader who fell to Boric in the 2021 presidential elections urged the leader of the Chilean Executive to dismiss his security team “today,” making explicit mention of the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, the Vice Minister of the Interior, Manuel Monsalve, and the Undersecretary of Crime Prevention, Eduardo Vergara.
“None of them should continue after these terrible events that have affected the Carabineros and our entire country,” said Kast.
The Chilean authorities confirmed this Saturday that three police officers were shot dead and later burned to death in an attack under investigation that occurred in a very conflictive area in the south of the country, in an incident that has led Boric to declare a state of national mourning and suspend his agenda to immediately travel to the scene.
The three were patrolling in the community of Cañete, province of Arauco, when they got into a shootout with unknown attackers who, after killing the agents, proceeded to set their vehicle on fire with them inside. The discovery of the bodies was carried out by fire personnel, who arrived at the scene after receiving a notice about the vehicle fire.
The area is under military guard due to the arson attacks that have occurred there, mostly attributed to radical Mapuche groups. And the attack occurred on the day that the Carabineros, the Chilean militarized police, celebrated its 97th anniversary.
The attack also took place the same week that the justice system found Héctor Llaitul, leader of the Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco (CAM), one of the groups that has claimed responsibility for attacks in the area. Llaitul risks up to 25 years in prison for these crimes, in a sentence that the court will announce on May 7.
(With information from AFP and EuropaPress)
