[ad_1]
Without the defendant present at the hearing, the sentence of the Third Criminal Oral Trial Court of Santiago against Francisco Andrés Hernández Riquelme, accused by the Public Ministry of having thrown five bombs, was announced through Zoom Molotov to Carabinieri, on December 10. “The Gendarmerie has informed that the inmate has not wanted to be at this hearing,” said magistrate Doris Ocampo.
The young man became the first convicted in an oral trial for crimes committed in the vicinity of Plaza Italia, in the context of demonstrations due to the social crisis.
Ñuñoa’s chief prosecutor, Álvaro Pérez, had asked Hernández for 20 years in prison (five years for each bomb he dropped), however, the court decided to give him a total of five years in prison.
“The defendant is sentenced to serve a single sentence of five years and one day of imprisonment in its minimum degree (…) for throwing incendiary devices Molotov cocktails on public roads, in neighboring sectors in the Plaza Baquedano”The judge read, adding that the sentence will have to be served in an “effective” way, that is, in jail.
In addition, the ruling says, the five bombs were considered “as a single crime.” This, because “although it is about five launch figures, said actions are circumscribed in the same situational context in which the protagonist is a person who has never been arrested before and without past records.”
According to the prosecution of the Public Ministry, on December 10, around 7:00 p.m., the defendant was in the central bandejón of Bustamante Park, where he caught and threw a Molotov at a police vehicle and police officers who were nearby. Then, in Av. Vicuña Mackenna with Carabineros de Chile street, he threw a second device at a police vehicle. And so on, until throwing a fifth Molotov. “Carabineros personnel followed the accused at all times, achieving his arrest in Calle Curicó with Av. Portugal,” says the prosecution.
According to the judges, the evidence presented at the trial, such as film evidence and photos, show “account of the presence, in at least six sectors surrounding Plaza Baquedano, of a subject dressed in a black hoodie with long sleeves , black Nike pants (…), clothing that fully matches the one seized from the detained person ”. They added that he is seen in “real-time recordings, in which he manipulates objects on the first occasion and repeatedly throws, five times with precision, an incendiary element of the Molotov cocktail type.
The prosecutor said that the five-year sentence “does not fit the large number of launches and the circumstances in which this occurred and we would have expected a greater penalty.”
The chief of the Carabineros OS-9, Colonel Juan Francisco González, said that “after working with cameras and drones, this person was identified by repeatedly throwing explosive devices at our personnel in the Plaza Italia sector. It was also possible to establish a scientific relationship between the clothes found in this person’s house and 50 images that we were able to trace ”.
Apart from this case, the prosecutor charged two other people for the same crime that occurred in the vicinity of Plaza Italia. Against Ibrahim Acevedo Carmona asked 12 years in total for shooting, on October 26, three Molotov and four more years for carrying an explosive. And against a minor it requires five years of closed regime for four Molotov shots, which occurred on November 20.
On the other hand, on August 18, the State Defense Council decided to sue civilians in two cases for human rights violations by the Carabineros in demonstrations due to the social crisis. One of them is that of a 15-year-old disabled young man, who, according to the National Institute of Human Rights, had his arm broken by the police. However, a total of 22 people decided “not to prosecute, for now, in relation to the injuries suffered in the context of the social outbreak”.
[ad_2]
