The Temuco Court of Appeals accepted the amparo appeal filed by the defense of Pelentaro Llaitul -younger son of Héctor Llaitul, leader of the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM)- and his transfer was authorized from the Valdivia prison to the Mapuche module of the Temuco prison.
Llaitul is joined by Luis Menares Chañilao and Jorge Caniupil Coñawho were serving the precautionary measure of preventive detention in the prison of the regional capital of Los Ríos after being formalized for allegedly having participated in arson attacks.
TEMUCO:
The Court of Appeals authorized the transfer of Pelentaro Llaitul and two other community members to the module for Mapuche defendants in the Temuco prison. They remain in pretrial detention in Valdivia.@Cooperative pic.twitter.com/mTn99bfFHt– Claudio Arevalo (@arevaloprensa) December 28, 2022
Llaitul, Chañilao and Caniupil were formalized as perpetrators of the consummated crimes from repeated arson, robbery with retention, robbery with intimidation, unjustified shooting, illegal possession of a conventional firearm and illegal possession of a prohibited firearm. Illegal crimes perpetrated in November just last year, in the commune of Lautaro.
All these defendants, in addition to other community members imprisoned in Biobío, added Héctor Llaitul himself, they are on a hunger strike in protest for having been referred to that facility and as a pressure measure so that they are taken to the Temuco jail.
The resolution states that “Gendarmerie must direct its work towards the resocialization of the inmates under its care, which is important, as far as possible, to carry out the deprivation of liberty respecting the ties of the convicted person to his place of residence and that of his relatives who could contribute to said purposean aspect that in this case should have been considered since his file indicates an address in Antofagasta, therefore the reasons stated in a generic way in the administrative resolution under study that do not appear from such an entity to justify the consequent uprooting that the transfer entails”.
Likewise, the ruling states that the information delivered by the Gendarmerie “at that time, after discussion. However, It is appreciated that the reasons indicated by the entity to recommend the transfer to the Valdivia Penitentiary Center, especially with regard to security, are rather generic and speculative“, and according to the latest information, “although the so-called ‘community module’ is currently under repair, the Mapuche inmates who are in module 1, bedroom 1, are not overcrowded.”
The appellate court took into account “not counting the Valdivia Penitentiary Center with said facilities”, such as receiving visits, cooking their food, accessing their ancestral medicine and practicing their spirituality, and “considering the distance in relation to the court that has ordered pre-trial detention and the residence of the protected persons, compliance with the preventive detention imposed in the adopted form could cause a family uprooting and affect the exercise with difficulty of their rights“.
“Among them -he continues- to be duly assisted by a lawyer and access to confer with him for the sake of the effective right of defense,” he concludes.
Temuco Court accepts appeal for amparo and orders Gendarmerie to transfer defendants to city prison pic.twitter.com/4KqFDkrPlb
– Chilean Judiciary (@PJudicialChile) December 28, 2022
Llaitul’s son and two other CAM members will be transferred to Temuco prison