Following the murder of three Carabineros in Cañete, the lawyer Cristián Riego He assured that in Chile it is not a problem that the anti-terrorist law is used to judge those responsible for this and other acts, but rather that impunity exists in the country.
“I think there are enormous doubts here as to whether this legislation, any legislation, let’s say, is what is needed, or whether common legislation is enough. What happens is that what is here is actually a problem of impunity,” he said in conversation with Al Pan Pan with Mirna Schindler.
He later reiterated that “what exists here is a problem of impunity, which is that the majority of the perpetrators of these crimes, and in this specific case that of the three police officers, have no known defendants, there is no one to blame and Therefore, that tends to reproduce the feeling that these crimes can be committed without greater cost.”
“That has nothing to do with the anti-terrorist law, because what the anti-terrorist law does is that it aggravates some penalties, it defines some crimes in a special way. And the anti-terrorist law has effectively shown that it is difficult to be applied because there are many cases in which it is not very clear what the purpose is,” he added.
“There is also a contradiction, because one of the things that the authorities have been saying is that precisely these people who commit these crimes, for example, in the case of Héctor Llaitul and the CAM, who in reality are not political organizations , but are largely criminal organizations. I don’t know if that’s true. But that’s what is being said. So, if that is so, if in reality what this Mapuche movement is covering up is actually a set of criminal gangs, it does not seem that the anti-terrorist law is the priority, because any anti-terrorist law is going to require that you propose evidence and propose how A fundamental element is that it is a political purpose. And that, first, they are saying that it is not like that,” he explained.
According to Riego, it is said that Mapuche organizations like the CAM are not “a political movement, but rather a criminal movement. And secondly, that is somehow always going to require a high standard of proof. And besides, that’s not the problem. The problem is impunity. The fact that once people are captured, there are no crimes to attribute to them.”
“On the contrary. There are many crimes to attribute to him. The crimes are attributed to them and they are sentenced to significant sentences, sometimes lasting dozens of years. So, the discussion of the anti-terrorist law, yes, it may be worth improving the anti-terrorist law, but I do not see it as a central issue, nor as a response to the challenges that are existing,” he closed.
