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There were 81 victims. Just a couple of weeks from it 10 years of the fire in the San Miguel Prison, the Seventh Civil Court of Santiago issued a historic ruling in which orders the State to pay a total compensation of $ 3,791,500,000 for non-material damage to the families of inmates who died in the penitentiary.
The Judge Carolina Ramírez analyzed the situation of each family member and based on the above, determined the amounts for which each one will be financially compensated by the Treasury. This after establishing a lack of service by the Gendarmerie. “The reasoning allows to establish that The administration did not observe the expected pattern of behavior, since not even the precariousness that the service possessed – or possesses – justifies the omissions it incurred, all of which constitute lack of service”, Says the ruling. 90 lawsuits were accepted and depending on how the moral damage was accredited in each case, the amounts fluctuate between $ 3 million and $ 112,000,000.
There are several cases, according to the 285-page sentence. Among the victims An emblematic case stands out, that of Bastián Arriagada, a young man who was deprived of liberty in that prison on December 8, 2010, when the tragedy occurred, for having no money to pay the fine after being caught selling pirated CDs. The magistrate accepted her claim and ordered the payment of $ 45 million to her family.
Another similar case is that of Óscar Arteaga Quincham, who only needed a couple of weeks to leave the prison where he was also for not paying a fine. The ruling indicates that the documents provided by his family in the lawsuit “graphic the impact that the loss of one of the members of the family group has generated on them (the family), A sentiment in which the fact that Arteaga Quicham’s deprivation of liberty occurred due to the non-payment of a fine, that he only lacked a week to regain his freedom, becomes relevant – especially for the mother and that, in addition, that deprivation has originated – according to the story of the actors – by the concurrence of a set of unfortunate circumstances ”.
The ruling adds that “only on the sixth day of the fire, doña María Isabel is contacted to go and recognize her son’s body, occasion in which they showed him only charred bones, an image that he has not been able to erase, and that he had for a long time looking for him in different hospitals; circumstances that precisely allow raising the amount of the referential compensation of the plaintiff mother ”. These plaintiffs will also be awarded just $ 45 million.
The amounts vary according to the situation of each applicant family and range between $ 3 million and $ 150 million. One of the plaintiffs, the lawyer Carlos Quezada placeholder image said to Third that “waiting ten years is a long time for justice to be done with these families, many parents of these victims have already died, others simply could not hold out any longer, a reform of the civil justice system is urgently needed, although a ruling like this now gives some peace of mind to dozens of families ”.
The ruling is of first instance, so the State Defense Council (CDE) can appeal.
In the sentence, Judge Ramírez maintains the responsibility that fell to the Gendarmería in having the conditions to face an emergency of this type. “Effectively, The prison authorities could not help but foresee that overcrowding, the non-existence of evacuation measures, the non-existence or absence of communication of a fire plan, the meager number of officials in charge of the prison population, the little or no firefighting preparation of the gendarmerie officials and the overflowing behavior of the inmates, they turned these gas cylinders into a time bomb for the security of the prison population; and for the same reason, having as a precedent that gas cylinders were an unwanted object, and only allowed because the fiscal resources destined to feeding the inmates were insufficient, their quantity should be restricted and the way of operating them should be controlled ”, it reads in sentence.
Although the accused gendarmes were acquitted in the criminal court, the Civil Court takes several of the passages of this oral court ruling to analyze the responsibilities of the Gendarmerie in the death of these victims and, therefore, of the State. This is how it was a determining factor for the resolution was the overcrowding of the San Miguel Prison at the time of the tragedy, which exceeded 295% and the excessive hours of confinement of its prison population. It should be remembered that this incident is unleashed when a group of inmates starts a fight and lights a fire provided with a gas cylinder with which they cooked. Other considerations were the absence of evacuation routes and few prison staff and elements to fight the fire.
However, the judge maintains that the lack of service cannot be proven because “It could not even be estimated that the central authority of the Chilean Gendarmerie was in a position to improve the overcrowding situation and the prolonged confinement of the inmates, as well as the low staffing of officials, being precisely those conditions those that prevent circumscribing the facts analyzed in this reason in a hypothesis of lack of service ”.
The civil court does criticize the lack of security and that the Gendarmerie did not control the number of gas cylinders per room. “This judge understands that the absence of an express provision emanating from the central authority, in order to supervise the aforementioned circumstances, does not release the administration of each precinct from the duty to supervise those aspects, being expected -and even enforceable- that it be so, since it is understood that this is the only interpretation that agrees with the objectives that the Law places on the Institution, purposes from which it seems to have departed (…) of the case emphasize that, The insufficient resources allocated to the maintenance of the prison population cannot be translated into a resignation of the functions entrusted to those who must protect the integrity of the inmates, and urge their reintegration”Says the ruling.
Likewise, the judge maintains that already in July of that year an inmate had used one of the gas cylinders as a flamethrower and that this time the threat of fire could be controlled because the prison population was not locked up. “LThe administration acted negligently with regard to the control of combustible material and the use of the elements to repel the fire with which it had, ”the document reads.
A critical analysis is made of the Gendarmerie, which is the institution in charge of the prisons in Chile, and it is argued that that day it did not act in a timely manner, even citing statements from those who were charged and who confess to having heard screams from Tower 5 and not to have come to the aid immediately. “We will also conclude that the Gendarmerie intervention was not timely; However, this court understands that even if it had been established that the Gendarmerie intervention took place in a reasonable time, it could not be considered effective, since it lacked coordination and proper handling of the elements destined to extinguish the fire and / or decrease its harmful effects (…) The delay with which the rescue of the inmates of the north wing was carried out is striking, since it seems that no one was able to warn -at first- that their lives were in danger”, Says the magistrate.
