Chile converts prison for oppressors into prison for ordinary prisoners

he punta peuco prison The facility was built during the administration of Eduardo Fray Luis Tagle, but its realization caused a serious crisis within the Concertación in late 1994, when the then Minister of Public Works, Ricardo Lagos Escobar, refused to begin construction without the legal approval of Congress and threatened to resign.

The prison, located 43 kilometers north of the city of Santiago, has a capacity of 130 people, but like other prisons in the country, it is already overcrowded and currently houses 141 former members of the armed forces, Carabineros and investigative police who have been convicted by the Court of Justice.

He was imprisoned there until shortly before his death in 2015. Former General Manuel Contreras, During the first years of the dictatorship, he served as the head of the intelligence agency (DINA). Currently, former executives are Miguel Krasnov Marchenko A person who has served a cumulative prison term of 1,047 years. and Pedro Espinosa Bravo Convicted of murdering Orlando Leterrier.

The transformation of Punta Peuco into a communal prison, which had been promised since the beginning of Gabriel Boric’s government, was realized in early November when the Comptroller’s Office announced that it had accepted the decree signed by the president. “This is an act of justice,” he declared at the time.

controversial decision

On Thursday of this week, military police transferred to the facility a 75-year-old man who was convicted of raping a 14-year-old minor.

Although international treaties stipulate that convicted state officials must be separated from the general population, the construction of Punta Peuco has always been a source of conflict between the left and Chile’s centre-right and radical rightists. In fact, in the current presidential election campaign, candidate José Antonio Casto and Johannes Kaiser They expressed their opposition to the measures adopted by Boric.

Former President Sebastián Piñera first accepted the requests of relatives of victims of human rights violations in February 2013 when he closed Cordillera Prison, a gendarmerie-run prison on army grounds in a commune at the base of the capital. The action came after Contreras said in a television interview that military police were cooperating with him and were “carrying him around with a cane.” This defiant attitude meant that Piñera ordered the prison’s closure, thus forcing the transfer of the former DINA chief to Punta Peuco.

nevertheless Michelle Bachelet She promised victims’ organizations that Punta Peuco would be closed, but this never happened. The former governor waited until the very end of his second term to dictate the necessary decrees on the morning of March 11, 2018, just hours before handing over command to Piñera. The measure failed because the radical Justice Minister Jaime Campos refused to sign a document pointing out the illegality of the measure. Years later, Ms. Bachelet said in an interview with CNN: “I shut it down…I ordered it. It couldn’t be done. “They didn’t pay attention to me.”

This morning, the Minister of Justice Jaime Gajardoconfirmed the transfer of ordinary prisoners and pointed out that from now on, Punta Peuco “will no longer be a special facility.”

Meanwhile, Gendarmerie Chief Rubén Perez clarified that this prisoner does not represent a problem for the prison management to coexist with other people there.

In any case, he ruled out the possibility of extremely dangerous prisoners arriving at Punta Peuco. He said: “Given the physical characteristics of the facility, the technology available and the age range of most prisoners, we will take great care to ensure that the characteristics of those housed there do not increase the likelihood of serious violent incidents, thereby excluding the presence of prisoners with high criminal records.”