Defense in Huracán Case Seeks Sentence Reduction Citing Penalty Standard from Matías Catrileo’s Killer

Original article: Defensa en Caso Huracán solicita rebaja de condena aludiendo estándar de pena del asesino de Matías Catrileo

By Morín Ortiz Herrera

On September 23, 2017, eight Mapuche leaders were detained and placed in pretrial detention on charges of terrorist association and arson.

The evidence presented by the then Director General of Carabineros, Bruno Villalobos, and the Intelligence General, Gonzalo Blu, to the Prosecutor’s Office included reports from the now-defunct Special Intelligence Operations Unit (UIOE) of Carabineros, which contained alleged intercepted conversations from the leaders’ cell phones planning attacks in the Araucanía and Los Ríos regions.

These conversations were widely disseminated by major national television networks, and their falsity was quickly demonstrated in what became known as the Huracán Case.

However, almost a decade later, after numerous delays, the trial against Carabineros officers finally took place in March 2025 at the Temuco Court, with the verdict announced on January 9, 2026, confirming what became evident shortly after the scandal: it was a setup orchestrated by high-ranking Carabineros officials in La Araucanía and a civilian contractor.

The Oral Criminal Court in Temuco found several Carabineros authorities guilty: General Gonzalo Blu Rodríguez, National Director of Intelligence, and Major Patricio Alejandro Marín Lazo, Operations Chief of Intelligence in Araucanía, were convicted of five counts of public document forgery and three counts of obstruction of justice; Captain Leonardo Marcelo Osses Sandoval received nine counts of public document forgery and seven counts of obstruction of justice; Colonel Marcelo Iván Teuber Muñoz and Corporal Manuel Riquelme Mardones were also found responsible for one count of obstruction of justice and one count of public document forgery.

The civilian Alex Smith Leay, an IT specialist charged with creating the failed software “Antorcha,” was convicted of nine counts of public document forgery, eight counts of obstruction of justice, one qualified count of obstruction of justice, and one count of malicious use of a false public document as a private individual. Meanwhile, five members of Labocar were acquitted.

Concerning actual prison sentences, the plaintiff requested seven years for Colonel Teuber and Corporal Riquelme, 13 years for Major Marín Lazo and General Gonzalo Blu, and 16 and 19 years of effective imprisonment for Captain Osses and Alex Smith, respectively.

“The True Political Responsible Parties Were Missing”

One of the victims of this setup, Machi Fidel Tranamil, attended the trial only on the day the verdict was read, expressing his lack of faith in institutions.

“We came to see if the State would be capable of condemning the individuals they themselves were sending at that time. There was a conviction, but it cut the thread at the most fragile point; the true political responsible parties for these actions were missing because Carabineros, in some way, ‘the cops,’ were the ones who executed the idea, but the political action was created in this case from Bachelet’s government. We would have liked to see Mahmud Aleuy -former Undersecretary of the Interior-, the responsible ministries, and the real generals seated in the dock and that they also faced a conviction,” he stated.

The ancestral Mapuche authority pointed out a bias: “There are not the same conditions for us. I thought they would be taken away by Gendarmería, as they do with the Mapuche, putting handcuffs on the convicted cops and that they would be put in jail. That is what we would see if we were on the other side.”

“It has been judicially demonstrated from a State institution that crimes occurred against leaders of Wallmapu who have autonomist ideas for the Mapuche Nation. We will see justice when the State responds for the murders, for the ‘Pacification of Araucanía,’ where they removed our people by blood and fire, and yet we are still here. We have been more than three years under a state of exception. The mothers continue to cry for their sons killed in the back by the same institution that set up this montage,” added Machi Fidel Tranamil.

Among those mothers is the mother of Matías Catrileo Quezada, a young Mapuche killed by then Corporal Walter Ramírez Inostroza of Carabineros in Vilcún on January 3, 2008. For that crime, he received a sentence of three years and one day under supervised release. This case was mentioned during the proceedings on Monday, January 12, 2026, when it was the defense’s turn to argue for the proposed penalties.

During this session, the defense for convicted Leonardo Osses requested a sentence reduction based on the penalty standard established by the court for the individual who committed murder while in the line of duty.

In this regard, plaintiff attorney Eduardo Painevilo from the Southern Research and Defense Center noted that “an argument is being made using a case that is under review by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for denial of justice, namely, the case of Matías Catrileo, which we consider inappropriate and cannot be the standard that the State of Chile should consider for convicting Carabineros who, exercising their public functions, implant evidence against any person, and in this specific case, against the Mapuche people.”

In this hearing, both the Prosecutor’s Office and the plaintiffs requested a change in precautionary measures to pretrial detention.

Plaintiff attorney Karina Riquelme stated that “we believe that the crimes for which they were convicted are extremely serious, undermining public trust and affecting the relationship between Chilean institutions and, in particular, with the Mapuche people. It is clearly not proportional today that those convicted of such types of crimes remain under precautionary measures at liberty.”

However, the court did not accept the change in precautionary measures, maintaining monthly signatures and national arraigo, and for Smith, house arrest. In response, the plaintiffs indicated they would appeal to the Appeals Court of Temuco to reverse this decision.

“If members of Carabineros de Chile have historically been convicted for serious crimes, then proportionally the precautionary measures must involve pretrial detention,” concluded attorney Karina Riquelme.

The communication of the sentence is scheduled for 10:00 AM on Thursday, April 2, 2026, at the Oral Criminal Court of Temuco.

The Citizen