The undersecretary of the Interior, Juan Francisco Galli, referred to the situation of the werkén of the Autonomous Community of Temucuicui, Jorge Huenchullán, who is at large — after the Court of Appeals of Temuco rejected the appeal for amparo filed by his defense and confirmed his pretrial detention, decreed after being charged with drug trafficking. illegal possession of firearms and ammunition and after a failed operation to stop him.
In conversation with Channel 13’s Mesa Central program, Galli remarked that Huenchullán “was found with 500 marijuana plants. It’s not microtrafficking for consumption, it’s drug trafficking.”
“We have been quite critical of the judicial decisions in recent times,” the undersecretary said, recounting that upon learning that Jorge Huenchullán arrived at a hospital infected with covid-19 “we shared that he fully recovered from his illness before proceeding with anything, but when he was recovered we told the Court, together with the Prosecutor General’s Office ‘it is time to arrest him and bring him to justice so that he can respond.'”
“I believe that the rule of law is at stake with the rules of democracy, here there are court orders and the police act according to their protocols. Obviously, when we have people in front of us who do not have a second of doubt to shoot to kill with high caliber weapons, weapon of war, but instead the police have to use the weapons only in self-defense or for the fulfillment of their functions the conditions are not the same,” he said.
He added that “I think it is right that they are not, we have to act with the rules of the rule of law and, therefore, that person who is accused of a serious crime, well he is going to be put at the disposal of a court safe and sound so that it is that court that judges with form to the evidence, recordings, drugs that were seized, heritage that is inexplicable. Let the Court judge when it is the responsibility that fits.”
Galli also addressed the acts of violence recorded by Temucuicui, noting that “just as in many neighborhoods and towns where there is a presence of drug trafficking there is violence, there are firearms, many of those communities are silenced.”
The undersecretary defended that in order to combat violence in the southern macrozone, we must “act with all the legitimate force of the State, but for that we need cross-cutting support. I appeal to the authorities of the Mapuche communities: to distance themselves, not to be complicit in drug trafficking.”
“To avoid the violence that is present not only in the southern macrozone, we must point to the sources, which are generally associated with what we call the triad ‘drugs, weapons and violence,'” the Interior Ministry official concluded.
