Chile: 8 Military Detained For Torture In 2019 Social Outburst

Chilean Justice decreed this Monday the precautionary measure of preventive imprisonment against eight Army officers accused of torture in the 2019 social outbreak.

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The Court of Appeals of Temuco welcomed the approaches of the Public Ministry and "ordered preventive detention for each one of the eight accused in this investigation," said prosecutor Raul Espinoza.

In the first appearance before the court, the judge dismissed the preventive detention requested by the Prosecutor's Office. The events are related to the firing squad simulation that occurred on October 22, 2019, in Temuco, during social demonstrations throughout Chile.

Espinoza said that the military "had the purpose of punishing the victims for their participation in social demonstrations, and not of illegitimate coercion, as the Guarantee Court pointed out at the time."

NOW: Temuco Court of Appeals orders preventive detention of 8 military personnel, charged as perpetrators of the crime of torture. Illicit perpetrated in October 2019 against 2 civilians in the vicinity of the municipal cemetery of Temuco.

According to the Prosecutor's indictment of October 22, 2019, the military detained two people during the night hours in the framework of the state of emergency in force at that time.

The young men were beaten and tied to a jeep to take them to a wall located in the General Cemetery of Temuco.

At the cemetery, they were forced to face the wall and formed into a firing squad position. The military carried out the movement of loading their weapons. Finally they released the victims, forcing them to flee and threatening to shoot them if they looked back.

During the 2019 social outbreak in Chile, protests were repressed by the militarized Carabineros police, the Investigative Police and the Armed Forces.

International organizations denounced widespread human rights violations in the episodes of violence that left more than thirty dead and thousands injured.