This Thursday, after two years of waiting, the Ninth Chamber of the Court of Appeals of Santiago began the relationship of the case of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva. This chamber will resolve the appeals and appeals that were filed after Minister Alejandro Madrid handed down convictions for simple homicides against six people.
Ministers Jaime Balmaceda, Guillermo de la Barra and Paola Plaza must establish whether they increase the sentence to a qualified homicide, as requested by the complainants, or if it accepts the position of the defenses, which call for acquitting their representatives.
It will not be a simple process since according to the newspaper La Tercera, there are more than 10 hours of allegations. Among them are the allegations of the late Patricio Silva and Helmar Rosenberg, who died.
At the hearing, the chamber resolved this request from the lawyers of the deceased, who wanted to participate in the pleadings in the case despite the dismissal that already exists over both of them because their responsibility was extinguished after their death. Although the complainants opposed it, yesterday the chamber acceded to the petition.
“The court considers that, notwithstanding the deaths referred to above, the full exercise of the rights of the defence must allow the conviction to be called upon to provide for the possible declaration of absence of criminal liability to be so on the account of the offence which gave rise to the conviction or the absence of participation in the sentence of the convicted person and not only to the fact that the fact of death has entailed , because these are situations that are obviously valued differently,” the resolution says.
Silva was the doctor who operated for the second time on Frei and was convicted by Madrid as the perpetrator of the murder at a 10-year sentence, while Rosenberg was convicted as a cover-up and had a three-year sentence.
