The Court of Appeals of La Serena confirmed the sentence condemning retired Carabineros sub-officer Luis Héctor Cuevas Tello to 5 years and one day in prison, as the perpetrator of the homicide of Pascual Antonio Guerrero Guerrero. The crime was committed in October 1973, in the locality of Casuto, in the commune of Andacollo.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 318-2018), the Second Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Jaime Franco, Carlos Jorquera, and acting lawyer Claudio Fernández—ratified the challenged sentence, issued by visiting judge Vicente Hormazábal, which established the former police officer's responsibility for the crime.

“In this matter, repeated jurisprudence of the Supreme Court specifies that, ‘in the case of a crime against humanity—which has been declared in this instance—whose criminal prosecution is imprescriptible, it is not coherent to understand that the corresponding civil action for compensation is subject to the statutes of limitation contemplated in internal civil law, since this contradicts the express will manifested by international Human Rights regulations, which are part of the national legal system, in harmony with the second paragraph of Article 5 of the Fundamental Charter, which establishes the right of victims and other legitimate holders to obtain due reparation for all damages suffered as a consequence of the illicit act, and even by domestic law itself, which, by virtue of Law No. 19.123, explicitly recognized the undeniable existence of the damages and also granted the relatives of those classified as forcibly disappeared and victims of political executions, due to human rights violations in the 1973-1990 period, economic or pecuniary benefits. Along these lines also run SCS Nos. 20.288-14, of April 13, 2015; 1.424, of April 1, 2014; 22.652, of March 31, 2015, among others’ (Supreme Court, May 31, 2018, File No. 37.175-17),” the ruling cites.

The resolution adds that: “Therefore, any intended differentiation in order to divide both actions and grant them unequal treatment is discriminatory and does not allow the legal system to maintain the coherence and unity indispensable in a democratic state of law.

Thus, to claim the use of the provisions of the Civil Code regarding liability derived from crimes against humanity, which are possible to commit with the active collaboration of the State, as supplementary common law to the entire legal regime, is today inappropriate.”

“Furthermore,” it continues, “the full reparation of the impairment is not discussed at the international level, nor is it limited exclusively to the perpetrators of the crimes, but also extends to the State itself.

International precepts have not created a system of liability; they have recognized it, since, undoubtedly, it has always existed, with an evolution of the tools intended to make its declaration more expeditious, simple, and effective, in attention to the nature of the violation and the right violated.”

“(…) in the case under study, given the context in which the events took place, with the intervention of State agents, protected under a mantle of impunity forged with state resources, it brings with it not only the impossibility of declaring the statute of limitations for the criminal action arising from them but also the unfeasibility of confirming the extinction, through the passage of time, of the probable exercise of the civil action for compensation derived from them,” the resolution adds.

In the civil aspect, the sentence ordering the State to pay $40,000,000 (forty million pesos) to each of the victim's six siblings was confirmed.

The ratified ruling established that “near midnight on October 6 and the early morning of October 7, 1973, a group of relatives and friends, adults and children, were gathered in a festive celebration at the home of the Portilla Rojas family, located in the Casuto sector of the commune of Andacollo, at which time police officers from the Carabineros Station of Andacollo, accompanied by Sergeant Gilberto Espinoza Mella (deceased), accompanied by Corporal Rubén Antonio Marín Vergara and Carabinero Luis Héctor Cuevas Tello, raided the home to arrest those present, without any judicial order, accusing them of being in a clandestine political meeting, and that in circumstances where the police were making the adults exit to the patio of the home, the then-Carabinero Luis Héctor Cuevas Tello shot Pascual Antonio Guerrero Guerrero point-blank, causing his death at the scene due to ‘acute anemia, gunshot wound’.”

Source: davidnoticias.cl, April 4, 2018