A Chilean court sentenced on Tuesday 34 individuals, including several Venezuelans, for various crimes such as homicide, kidnapping, human trafficking, drug and weapons traffickingamong others, in what the first mega-trial against organized crime in the country. On the other hand, four accused were acquitted, including three women.
After more than seven months of trial and 91 days of hearings, the Oral Court of Arica, a port city located in the north of the country, heard the 22 accusations against The Gallegosone of the armed arms of the Venezuelan criminal organization Aragua Trainwhich has operations in Chilean territory.
The court considered that of the 38 accused, 34 are guilty of various “violent crimes”among them illicit association, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, attempted homicide of a police officer, kidnapping for ransom, human trafficking for aggravated sexual exploitation, homicide and illegal possession of a firearm.
Besides, acquitted four others, including three womenabiding by the defense’s argument that they were not “active participants in the crimes charged, but rather victims of a criminal organization.”
“After presenting various means of evidence, the Arica Prosecutor’s Office manages to convict 34 defendants for various violent crimes,” the entity reported through its X account, former Twitter.
Despite the conviction, The sentence has not yet been announced and its reading will be in the coming days.
The Prosecutor’s Office requests life imprisonment for eleven inmates, who were identified as the leaders of the criminal association and are already in preventive detention. For the others, the Public Ministry requested different penalties according to their “degrees of participation” in the criminal gang.
The regional prosecutor of Arica, Mario Carrera Guerreroconfirmed that the court will announce the sentences of each one, that is, how many years in prison they will pay, on March 6, 2025.
Of the total of 38 accused, 34 are Venezuelans and 4 Chileans, while 29 are men and nine are women.
The Prosecutor’s Office’s accusation is based on 22 criminal acts in which the defendants had different levels of participation, including seven homicidessix of them qualified, occurring in 2022.
The oral trial began on April 22 and included 91 days, during which prosecutors presented more than 35 witnesses, including the statement of an undercover agent infiltrated in the organization. Likewise, they were reproduced more than a hundred telephone interceptions, videos and sections of the accounting notebooks seized from the organizationas detailed by the Public Ministry.
The trial, with unique characteristics until now, represents the first major blow against organized crime in Chile, which is experiencing a unprecedented insecurity crisis after the entry of various international criminal gangs in recent years.
“In the context of the phenomenon of transnational organized crime that is registered in the country, this corresponds to the first oral trial of its kind in Chile,” the Prosecutor’s Office emphasized.
The Los Gallegos clan is a tentacle of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang that crossed the borders and became an armed wing of the group in the extreme north of Chile, an area that is experiencing a proliferation of organized crime.
The Aragua Train is considered the largest and most powerful criminal structure in Venezuela and is one of the few that has managed to consolidate itself abroad, with a presence in various countries such as Colombia, Peru, Chile and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil, according to data from the non-governmental organization InSight Crime and the government of USA.
(With information from AP)
