Original article: «Caso Lautaro»: Abogado Marco Oñate acusa sesgo policial y de fiscalía contra imputados por su condición de mapuche Lawyer Marco Oñate Highlights Police and Prosecution Bias Against Mapuche Defendants in «Lautaro Case» Criminal defense attorney Marco Oñate discussed the implications of the trial dubbed the «Lautaro Case» on our program Sentido Común! He claimed that there is a significant bias from both the police and the Public Ministry against the defendants due to their Mapuche identity. It’s worth noting that this case investigates three arson attacks on machinery and vehicles belonging to forestry companies, which occurred on November 22, 2022, in the San Luis and La Serena farms within the Lautaro region, and in the Santa Laura farm near Cholchol.
Oñate explained that the five accused were arrested «under a flagrant hypothesis, and this brings us to the core issue: what we have always questioned as the defense is that none of them underwent any corroboration procedures of their involvement. The police were satisfied with the notion of flagrancy,» a term he emphasized does not legally imply they were caught in the act of committing the crime. This is a crucial aspect because in a trial, flagrancy alone is insufficient proof that someone committed a specific crime: «In a trial, the investigative file does not dictate the outcome; the evidence presented during the trial governs the proceedings.
Judges are constitutionally and supra-constitutionally obligated to weigh it comprehensively to reach a verdict of either conviction or acquittal,» Oñate asserted. In that regard, the attorney indicated that there is a common theory concerning the five defendants, which is the inadequate participation of each individual accused. As for Juan Carlos Mardones Sáez, his client, the theory extends beyond mere lack of participation.
Here, there is a bias as the investigation lacks even preliminary evidence to suggest their involvement in the arson attacks. “There are no phone call tracking records, which are usually utilized in cases like this; there are no geolocation or georeferencing analyses at the crime scenes, and there were no photographic line-ups conducted with victims and witnesses at the time of the arrests—a basic procedure that law enforcement should propose to the prosecution,” the defense attorney argued. Additionally, the arrests occurred at varying times, and the defendants were not all together at the same location: «In my client’s case, he was arrested around 3:30 PM, seven hours after the last attack, and over 40 kilometers away from the last incident’s location,» Marco Oñate noted.