The Río Negro police detained the Mapuche leader Facundo Jones Huala in a house in El Bolsón, Río Negro. The operation that found the whereabouts of the fugitive activist since February 2022 was carried out during the early hours of Monday, as reported by the government of Arabela Carreras through a press release. The members of the Río Negro security force caught the leader of the Mapuche Ancestral Resistance (RAM) while He was hiding in the barbecue area of a neighbor’s house in the La Esperanza neighborhood.
“From the determination of the escape of Jones Huala in Chile, and the possibility that he moved to Patagonia to take refuge, the Police of Río Negro and the Ministry of Security of the Province carried out different operations, which included intense work search through its special units and the Investigation Brigade to be able to find his whereabouts. Today, these efforts paid off,” reads the document signed by the Government of Río Negro.
After his arrest, the work coordinated with the Federal Justice was reactivated and with the Ordinary Justice regarding procedural steps to follow given that Jones Huala presents an Interpol blue alert, which aims to undermine information “about the identity of a person, his whereabouts or his criminal activities in relation to a criminal investigation”. Within the framework of a provincial case, he could be accused of different charges.
Fugitive for almost a year
In mid-February 2022, the Supreme Court of Chile rejected the amparo action filed by the defense of Facundo Jones Huala. In this way, the Mapuche activist will have to return to the Temuco jail to serve the entirety of his sentence in a Chilean prison.
In a letter signed this Tuesday in Santiago, The judges of the Court revoked “the appealed sentence of January 20, 2022, issued by the Temuco Court of Appeals” that had allowed Jones Huala to be released from that prison on probation. From Santiago de Chile, Francisco Galli, Undersecretary of the Interior, affirmed that he valued the ruling of the Court on Tuesday regarding Jones Huala, which accepted the appeal presented by the Chilean government from that ministry.
“He is sentenced in our country for having taken a family with children, through firearms, and then having burned a house in our country. That conviction was achieved after he fled to Argentina, after he was extradited and tried in Chile.However, the Court of Appeals of Temuco granted him conditional release with the opposition of the Ministry of the Interior and the opposition of the Chilean Gendarmerie, today that resolution is revoked but we have to find him, put him where he belongs, that he is deprived of liberty so that serve his sentence in our country,” he said.
The Chilean official celebrated the ruling of the Supreme Court
Among the arguments of the ruling, signed by five judges -one of them in dissent- from one of the chambers that make up the twenty-member court, it is argued that the condition of being a member of an original people is not enough to alleviate the penalty in the type of crime for which Jones Huala was tried. Then the resolution issued by the Parole Commission of October 2021 is maintained.
The Argentine was sentenced to 6 years in prison in December 2018 for having set fire to a rural house in Chile in 2013 and another three years for illegally carrying a firearm (homemade). That sentence ends on June 26, 2024. Born in Bariloche, Jones Huala had been extradited in 2018 to serve his sentence.
Jones Huala had been released in January 2022
Theresa, the mother of huala jonesconfirmed a year ago that his son was going to be released and said that the return of the mapuche leader to Argentina.
“A year ago I should have been on probation,” Teresa said on that occasion, after specifying that her son was “accused of setting fire to a housebut without evidence” and ended up in custody.
Chilean justice released Jones Huala, leader of the Mapuche Ancestral Resistance
The ruling that frees the Mapuche leader
A failure of the Temuco Court of Appeals decided to accept the amparo appeal presented by the defense of the Argentine Mapuche lonco Facundo Jones Huala, for which he orders that the benefit of probation be granted.
According to the newspaper Río Negro, the measure is signed by the judges Carlos Gutierrez Zavala and Luz Monica Arancivia Menawho resolved the amparo 12/2022 promoted by the defense lawyers of Jones Huala, Karina Riquelme and Patricia Cuevas Suárez.
The Appeals Chamber upheld the amparo filed on January 11 against the resolution dated October 14 by the Parole Commission of the Court of Appeals of Temuco that he had denied Jones Huala’s parole because he considered it irrelevant.
The defense of the young Mapuche born in Bariloche reminded the court that Chilean Gendarmerie considered that the detainee “meets the legal requirements established in Decree Law No. 321 and its Regulations, for which he was nominated for probation corresponding to the second semester of 2021.”
That resolution was based on the background of the Mapuche, the behavioral and psychosocial reports, as well as the opinion of professionals, but still in October the Parole Commission denied the request.
