The minister of the Temuco Court of Appeals, Alvaro Mesa, indicted Gabriel Gonzalo Gatica Riquelme and Moisés del Carmen Contreras Díaz for the qualified homicide of Juan Segundo Tralcal Huenchuman, which occurred in September 1975.

The minister of the Temuco Court of Appeals, Alvaro Mesa, issued an indictment against two retired Carabineros, accused of being co-perpetrators of the qualified homicide of a Mapuche farmer in September 1975.

The minister indicted Gabriel Gonzalo Gatica Riquelme, corporal first class (ret.), and Moisés del Carmen Contreras Díaz, sergeant major (ret.), for the homicide of Mapuche community member Juan Segundo Tralcal Huenchuman, which occurred on September 10, 1975, inside the Blanco Lepín community in the commune of Lautaro.

According to the information gathered during the investigation, a Carabineros patrol from the Pillanlelbún station, under the orders of Sergeant Santiago Millaguir Hueche and composed of two Carabineros corporals, traveled in a private vehicle driven by Hugo Eugenio Salazar Insunza, a local farmer, to the home of Juan Segundo Tralcal Huenchuman, located in the Blanco Lepin Community, in the commune of Lautaro.

Upon arriving at the victim's home, the uniformed officers forced him to leave his dwelling and fired their weapons at him, wounding him gravely, which led to his death at the Lautaro Hospital.

Source: soychile.cl, September 25, 2013

Supreme Court convicts retired Carabineros for the murder of a Mapuche community member during the dictatorship

The ruling of the highest court sentences Gabriel Gatica Riquelme and Moisés Contreras Díaz to 3 years and one day in prison for the authorship of the qualified homicide of Mapuche community member Juan Segundo Tralcal Huenchuman, who was shot at his home on September 10, 1975.

In civil matters, the state is ordered to compensate each of his five children with an amount of 50 million pesos. The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court issued a final judgment with sentences of 3 years and one day in prison, with the benefit of supervised release, for retired Carabineros Gabriel García Riquelme and Moisés Contreras Díaz for the violent murder of Mapuche community member Juan Segundo Tralcal Huenchumán , which occurred in Lautaro in 1975.

Additionally, the State must compensate the victim's family members with $250,000,000 ($50,000,000 to each of his children) for moral damages. The ruling issued by the highest court states that the qualified homicide of Juan Segundo Tralcal Huenchumán, “in which the accused participated as authors, constitutes a crime against humanity , as it satisfies the previously developed requirements.

Indeed, the murder of the victim, who belonged to the civilian population, was not a merely isolated, random, or circumstantial act, but rather reveals itself as an excessively violent conduct, planned and determined by prejudices and suspicions lacking any foundation, directed against an individual defenseless against state-police power.” The facts The case began to be investigated in 2013 by the minister of the Temuco Court of Appeals Álvaro Mesa Latorre , who issued an indictment against Gatica Riquelme and Contreras Díaz as co-perpetrators of the crime of qualified homicide of the community member. It was in December of last year when Mesa Latorre sentenced the accused to 10 years in prison after verifying, according to the contents of the corresponding ruling, that on September 10, 1975, “a Carabineros patrol from the Pillanlelbún station, under the orders of Sergeant Santiago Millaguir Hueche and also composed of two Carabineros corporals from the aforementioned unit, Moisés del Carmen Contreras Díaz and Gabriel Gonzalo Gatica Riquelme, went to the home of Juan Segundo Tralcal Huenchumán, located in the Blanco Lepín Community, in the commune of Lautaro. The uniformed officers, upon arriving at the home, proceeded to break into it, firing their weapons at Juan Segundo Tralcal Huenchumán, wounding him gravely.” The sentence further adds that “the group of captors forced Mercedes Tralcal Correa —the wife of the deceased—to find a horse belonging to her and transport the wounded man to the private vehicle that was waiting for them a few meters away from the house. The police patrol transported the wounded man to the Lautaro hospital, where they were told that he was gravely wounded, and he was therefore transferred by ambulance to the Temuco hospital, accompanied by the Sergeant and one of the Corporals who were part of the patrol that detained and wounded him. At the Hospital, they were told that the wounded man had died.” “The next day,” the text continues, “Tralcal Huenchumán’s spouse, having no news of him, went to the Lautaro hospital, where she was informed that her husband had been transferred to Temuco. Upon arriving at the Temuco Hospital, they informed her of her spouse’s death, and she retrieved his body from the morgue of that medical center. The autopsy of Juan Tralcal Huenchumán, performed by the Legal Medical Service of Temuco, indicates that the death of Juan Segundo Tralcal Huenchumán was due to shock and acute anemia caused by a transfixing pelvic gunshot wound.”

Source: elciudadano.cl, November 25, 2014