(From Santiago, Chile) This day one of the most emblematic trials of the so-called “Mapuche conflict” Chilean: Hector Llaitul, spokesman and leader of the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM), was finally sentenced to 23 years of effective prison, after being found guilty of various crimes contemplated in the State Security Law.
In the breakdown of the sentence, it is possible to see that the Oral Criminal Court of Temuco gave Llaitul 15 years of effective imprisonment for the repeated consummated crimes of disturbance against public order.
He also sentenced him to five years of prison and the payment of a fine of USD 770 as the author of the consummated crime of wood theftalready three years as author of the consummated crime of attack against authority.
Additionally, the CAM leader must pay a fine of USD 1,050 as the author of the repeated crime of usurpation.
It should be noted that the Ministry of the Interior and the Prosecutor’s Office, plaintiffs in the case, requested 25 years prison for the Mapuche leader, who is now 56 years old and has been in preventive detention since August 2022, a period that will be deducted from his sentence.
The hearing, announced on April 22, was marked by the upsurge of violence and the reinforcement of the security contingent in the Southern Macrozone. Yesterday, the Chilean authorities announced that the region of La Araucanía is under “Red alert”according to a Cooperative note.
This is because it is possible that retaliatory attacks, whether from the CAM or other radical Mapuche organizations, since the cruel murder of three police officers in the commune of Cañete, an event that occurred a few days after Llaitul was found guilty.
However, to date there has still been no reported link between the murder of the uniformed men and the CAM or any other extremist group of the area.
The prosecutor Roberto Garrido At the end of the hearing, he highlighted that the sentence awarded by the court has “an important closeness between what the Prosecutor’s Office had proposed, such as the sentence that was awarded with the severity of the events and the number of crimes that were attributed and that were accredited during this process.”
“From our point of view we are compliant with the work done. I think that investigation it was very diligent It was carried out in objective terms and respecting the rights of the people involved,” he highlighted.
The prosecutor also highlighted that the sentence “marks a relevant precedent in the persecution of criminal organizations that operate in the Southern Macrozone. And in that sense I think we can be satisfied and happy with the work done”.
