With their detention extended until next Thursday, at 12:00 p.m., there were four subjects who were apprehended yesterday morning, in Cañete, by the Robbery Investigative Brigade (BIRO) of the Angol Investigative Police, accused of Be part of a violent gang of vehicle robbers on rural roads.
In this regard, the head of the BIRO, sub-prefect Rodrigo Briones, said that this is an investigation for robbery with intimidation and violation of the Weapons Law, which is being investigated together with the Angol Prosecutor’s Office. On Sunday – he explained – “an arrest warrant was obtained for four defendants, members of a criminal gang, which was dedicated to the crime of theft of motor vehicles, through intimidation and violence, on the route that connects Purén with Cañete.”
The officer added that “this investigation allowed us to determine that the defendants, residents of the Antiquina sector, in the Cañete commune, transported the vehicles to that sector, some for dismantling and subsequent sale, and others for use in the commission of other crimes.”
In addition, he specified, two properties were raided, one in Purén (La Araucanía Region) and another in Cañete (Biobío).
As it was established, these were subjects who formed a very violent criminal gang, whose base of operations was precisely in Antiquina, that is, the same sector where the three Carabineros non-commissioned officers were murdered on Saturday morning.
So far we know of six assaults committed by the group, on the aforementioned road, where they appeared hooded, dressed in camouflage clothing and armed with weapons that the victims describe as rifles, to take their vehicles. However, no firearms were found during the diligence (air rifles were found). In the arrests carried out in Cañete, a fifth person was arrested, a woman, who was formalized for illegal possession of ammunition.
Regarding the other four, prosecutor Marcos Pavez indicated that an extension of the detention until next Thursday was requested, to which the Purén Guarantee Court, where the case is being filed, agreed.
The nexus
Although the presidential delegate of La Araucanía, José Montalva, denied that these arrests were related to the crime of the police, two of the four arrested yesterday had already been apprehended on Sunday afternoon in a minimarket in the town of Antiquina, by of the Carabineros GOPE, in what the Undersecretary of the Interior described as an “investigative identity control,” which culminated in the freedom of the subjects, since no evidence was found that linked them at that time to the triple homicide.
However, they continue to be “subjects of interest” in the case, not only because of the criminal profile they have and because they have their base of operations in the area, but because one of them would be linked to the “Mapuche Lakfenche Resistance” (RML). , the most violent radical organization in the area, in the opinion of both police forces, which exercises territorial control in the Antiquina sector, precisely, and which, among other events, is responsible for the installation of a car bomb on the Lleu Lleu bridge and the attack against the Grollmus mill. The group has also flaunted the weapons it has through social networks, including high-caliber rifles and shotguns.
The new team
The days that those accused of the car thefts are detained, awaiting formalization, will be key for the team of prosecutors now headed by the head of the La Araucanía persecutors, Roberto Garrido, in order to decide if they continue to be –or not– “subjects of interest” regarding what happened in Antiquina.
Garrido not only has extensive experience in complex cases linked to rural violence, but he has also had to direct three investigations into police homicides that occurred in the same context.
Although it has not yet been announced which team of prosecutors he will work with, police sources take it for granted that prosecutor Carlos Bustos, who operationally led the investigations into the homicides of Corporal Eugenio Naín (murdered), must be part of this team. in Padre Las Casas, in October 2020), of Sergeant Francisco Benavides (murdered in 2021, in Collipulli) and of PDI inspector Luis Morales Balcázar (murdered inside the Temucuicui community, in Ercilla, also in 2021).
In the three cases, the alleged perpetrators were arrested and in one of the processes there are already convicts: the case of Corporal Eugenio Naín, where the main accused, Luis Tranamil, received a sentence of 32 years, adding all the penalties.
In that investigation, as well as that of Sergeant Benavides, the La Araucanía Prosecutor’s Office worked together with a team from the OS-9 of Carabineros de Santiago, reinforced with local personnel. This is the same team of police officers that has been in Cañete since Saturday, in charge of the investigations.
The case of Corporal Naín, in fact, is paradigmatic due to the way in which it was investigated, which was summarized by the La Araucanía Prosecutor’s Office in the following video:
