He regional prosecutor, Patricio Cooper, took charge of the errors made by the Los Vilos Prosecutor’s Office, which sent a assistant attorney, Luis Soto, on his behalf, to the hearing to review precautionary measures against five members of the Aragua Train, accused of aggravated kidnapping among other crimes.
As a result of the lack of knowledge that the professional maintained about the case investigation folder, the judge of the Los Vilos court, Daniela Pinto, The precautionary measure of preventive detention was replaced by house arrest.
Given the questions raised by this situation, in a statement sent by the regional prosecutor, he announced an administrative investigation into what happened at the hearing with the members of the Aragua Train.
“The Coquimbo Regional Prosecutor’s Office has ordered an administrative investigation to be carried out in the Los Vilos Prosecutor’s Office in light of what happened in the hearing to review precautionary measures in a case involving defendants accused of kidnapping in that town,” Cooper said.
In this sense, he added that, with this measure, the aim is to establish the level of compliance with the guidelines sent previously for the proper preparation of the hearing by prosecutors and assistant lawyers.
“Along with this administrative measure to see what happened inside the Prosecutor’s Office, and that we take charge, we make quick decisions regarding the case itself,” he acknowledged.
“That same day, an appeal was filed before the illustrious Court of Appeals of La Serena, an appeal that was accepted and which revoked the initial judicial decision and, at the same time, we proceeded to coordinate with the police for the proper arrest of the accused and just last night (Wednesday) one of these accused was arrested, returning to preventive detention,” argued the regional prosecutor.
In passing, he made it clear that as the Regional Prosecutor’s Office they were focused on putting their best effort into the criminal prosecution of crimes that cause so much public commotion.
It should be remembered that, during the controversial precautionary review hearing, the assistant lawyer acknowledged before the judge of the Guarantee Court that he was unaware of the background of the case against those accused of kidnapping, so he could not refute each point alleged by the defense of the accused and their arguments were not clear to the magistrate.
According to information collected by Diario El Día, the professional had also only been working in the Los Vilos prosecutor’s office for only five months, where there is only one prosecutor.
What happened has also generated criticism from the political world. In fact, the Minister of Justice himself, Luis Cordero, questioned what happened.
“Probably, I am not justifying the decision (of the judge), but there is (a flaw), it is very evident how the debate occurs and that probably generated the provision that if the Public Ministry was not acting with precision, then it corresponded accept the defense request,” he said in an interview with Infinita.
In this regard, the UDI deputy for Coquimbo, Marco Antonio Sulantay, sent a letter requesting an exhaustive report on the reasons that led to the absence of both the main prosecutor and the substitute prosecutor at said hearing.
“It is essential to know the specific reasons for the absences of the main prosecutors, as well as to know the time in advance with which the deputy lawyer was assigned to the hearing,” Sulantay stressed.
“We need to know what happened in this hearing and rule out possible threats to officials, or irregularities such as the situation that occurred in Arica with the “Los Gallegos” trial and thus identifying possible failures in the system and proposing improvements that avoid future irregularities,” he concluded.
