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A statement to “wash their hands” of their responsibilities in the Catrillanca case was the keynote of the testimony delivered by former Interior Minister Andrés Chadwick on the third weekly day of the oral trial for the crime of the Mapuche community member.
“As Minister of the Interior, I was not calm with the information received,” was one of the phrases launched by the former chief of staff, who stressed at all times that from the first moment he did not trust the version delivered by the Carabineros on the events that occurred on the 14th. November 2018 in Temucuicui, when the 24-year-old community member died shot in the head by a police patrol.
Chadwick gave a statement via zoom in the trial that takes place in the Oral Criminal Court of Angol, in a week in which the former general director of the Carabineros Hermes Soto, the general (r) Mauro Victtoriano, who in the At the time when the crime occurred, Camilo Catrillanca was the officer in charge of the Carabineros headquarters of La Araucanía, and General (r) Christian Franzani, former director of Order and Security.
According to what was reported by The second, the former minister answered the questions of the Prosecutor’s Office and the plaintiffs, assuring that on November 15, the day after the events occurred, General Hermes Soto sent him a report with the title “executive summary” which spoke of the theft of vehicles in the rural school of Santa Rosa, the attacks with weapons and the entire initial version that Carabineros delivered and which was proven false. It was with this information that he called President Sebastián Piñera who was in Asia.
And just as yesterday in his testimony Hermes Soto endorsed all responsibility on the police members of the patrol, whom he accused of “hiding information of vital importance” for the development of the process, Chadwick did the same, but with the institution of the Carabineros.
According to Chadwick, from the beginning it was decided the need to “reiterate the expression that the information that exists is what the Carabineros has sent us, that it is about the information and the version that they have sent, but that obviously the final version is subject to investigation by the Public Ministry ”.
Regarding what was his action in the face of this event, which put the Government in check, Chadwick pointed out that “my main concern as Minister of the Interior was to collect and learn the background of an event obviously of very special gravity: a young man dies, dies in a community like Temucuicui, which has enormous significance in the Mapuche communities and I am dedicated to being able to inquire and receive information that is accurate and clear about the facts ”.
In this context, Chadwick took special care to define responsibilities in the uniformed police, pointing out “very repeatedly that the information came from the Carabineros” and “this shows that as the Minister of the Interior I was not calm with the information received.”
In his own words, he indicates that he persistently expressed his “concern that we had a history that would allow us to have certainty of the facts that were being known.”
The contrast with what happened on November 14
Chadwick’s sayings contrast with what was the government’s action that day of November 14, given that once the events occurred, La Moneda kept strict silence, although the meetings, monitoring and follow-up on the issue did not stop.
As recounted in a note by The counter of the time, in that instance it was resolved that in the eyes of the Government this was a criminal matter, for which there was no need for any authority in the Palace to come out to give explanations, a task that was left in the hands of the mayor of La Araucanía, Luis Mayol. In fact, around 8:00 pm –almost three and a half hours after the episode– Mayol spoke, pointing out that it was “acts of common crime and those affected are the teachers or teaching staff who suffered the theft of their vehicles. The deceased person has a record of receiving vehicles ”.
Go Pro cameras
Another of the key issues in Chadwick’s statement was to know when the authorities learned of the existence of Go Pro cameras that recorded the operation on the ground. According to the former head of the Interior, he only learned about these cameras on Saturday the 17th, that is, three days after the events.
“Hermes Soto tells me that he had the information that one of the members of the patrol did carry a camera and that the sergeant had explained that the contents of the card had been destroyed because it contained scenes or statements of privacy,” he said.
According to what was indicated by Chadwick before the court, at that moment the prosecutor was contacted and required Hermes Soto to immediately file the complaint and define to file complaints.
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