While the investigation continues to clarify how the three police officers murdered Saturday morning in the region of Bio Bioin the south-central area of Chile, the intense search continues to find the perpetrators of the crime that this weekend has shocked the entire country.
The Chilean Undersecretary of the Interior, Manuel Monsalveannounced this Sunday that the Government will file a complaint against those responsible for homicide against Carabineros, violation of the Weapons Law and criminal organization, crimes that carry a qualified life sentence.
“We are aspiring to the highest penalties,” Monsalve said at a press point from the scene.
During the day this Sunday, the bodies of the agents were also delivered to their families, after the Legal Medical Service (SML) completed its expertise, which will be one of the key points of the investigation.
The attack against the Public Order Control (COP) officials of the Los Álamos police station occurred in the town of Cañete, 600 kilometers south of the capital, when a group of armed men shot at the police patrol, before setting fire to the vehicle with them inside. A sergeant and two corporals were burned to death.
This is the worst attack against Carabineros, the country’s militarized Police, in recent history, both because it is a multiple simultaneous murder as well as the way in which the agents were murdered, according to the first investigations.
“This is a fact whose modus operandi does not correspond to what we know about rural violence in recent years, and the investigation will have to determine what we are facing,” Monsalve later noted in a television interview.
The regions of Bio Bío and The Araucanía have been the scene for decades of a conflict that involves indigenous peoples, the State and large landowners and forestry businessmen that exploit lands and forests considered ancestral by indigenous communities.
Since May 2022, the areas affected by the conflict have been under a state of emergency, in an attempt to control attacks by armed groups, mostly incendiary sabotage.
This situation is now combined with a security crisis that the country is going through and that has caused an increase in violent crimes and organized crime.
“We may be facing a specific and specific event or a change in the scenario and strategies of rural violence. “That is something that must be clarified within the framework of the investigation,” the authority insisted.
In the midst of the upheaval, which coincided with the commemoration of Carabinero Day in Chile, the controversy was reopened about whether it is time for the general director of Carabineros, Ricardo Yanezleaves his position after the accusation by the Prosecutor’s Office for his eventual command responsibility in the human rights violations committed during the social outbreak of 2019.
Although this same week the Government, under pressure from a part of the ruling party, had announced that the police chief would leave office before his formalization (imputation by the judge), scheduled for May 7, this hard blow to the Carabineros changed the scenario.
The Minister of the Interior, Carolina Toháconfirmed that the Government will not remove him from office despite his upcoming accusation: “At this time it is not appropriate to have changes of command,” he said.
“Although we consider it very inconvenient that the authorities are simultaneously facing an investigation, at a time like this, it would not be appropriate to remove the police leadership,” he explained.
Both the president Gabriel Boric Like Tohá herself on Saturday, they had already questioned his resignation.
This shakeup to the police institution occurs just one year after another crisis also caused by the murders of three police officers that occurred in less than 21 days. This episode promoted a legislative agenda on security that grants more powers to police officers in the use of weapons and part of which continues its processing in Congress.
(With information from EFE)
