Original article: Otro traspié de Steinert en «Caso Lincolao»: Corte de Valdivia declaró inadmisible su solicitud de ampliar la querella invocando la Ley de Seguridad del Estado The Valdivia Court ruled today that the expansion of the lawsuit initiated by the Ministry of Public Security was inadmissible due to a lack of active legitimacy. This decision came after the Public Defense (DPP) filed a protective action against the Ministry, asserting that it lacked the legal authority to act under the State Security Law, which is a power reserved exclusively for the Ministry of the Interior. This week, the DPP filed this judicial action, arguing that Trinidad Steinert’s Ministry of Security did not possess the legal faculties to pursue a lawsuit under the State Security Law, as such authority lies solely with the Ministry of the Interior.
The First Chamber of the appeals court, composed of judges Juan Ignacio Correa Rosado, María Soledad Piñeiro Fuenzalida, and Soledad Orellana Pino, unanimously rejected the requested extension after determining that the Ministry of Public Security lacked the necessary active legitimacy to sue in this case under the State Security Law. «Considering the provisions of Article 26 of the State Security Law, along with Articles 3 and 7 of Decree Law No. 7912, amended by Law No.
21. 730, the lack of active legitimacy of the Ministry of Public Security to file a lawsuit for the crime on which it based its request for lawsuit expansion is evident, since the same law fixed the powers of the aforementioned ministerial portfolio and expressly decided to maintain the authority to file the relevant lawsuit within the Ministry of the Interior, without granting the Ministry of Public Security the same power,» the ruling stated. The ruling further adds that, «this is also consistent with the retention of the authority to file lawsuits by regional presidential delegates, given that the Ministry of the Interior is responsible for all matters relating to Political and Local Governance of the territory, making it coherent that, in this sense, the current specification of the government function maintains adequate coordination at the national and regional levels between the specified organs.
» Additionally, the appeals court emphasized that «the Criminal Procedure Reform imposed restrictions on who can have the status of a complainant in the criminal process, considering that it is not possible to overlook, on one hand, the preeminence of the Public Ministry as an autonomous body exercising public criminal action and, on the other hand, that the indiscriminate proliferation of punitive claims in a process by subjects not governed by the principle of objectivity can pose a threat to the due equality of arms that inspires the criminal process.