III. POSITION OF THE PARTIES A. Petitioners 8. In their initial petition, the complainants indicated that Mr. Víctor Manuel Ancalaf Llaupe is an indigenous Mapuche and has the title of Werken, i.e., a community messenger, or Lof,2 who was convicted as the alleged perpetrator of the alleged offense of terrorism. The petitioners indicate that on March 19, 2002, the then Governor the province of Bío-Bío, in the country’s Region IX, a confidential employee of the President of the Republic, a government official, and state administration official, filed a petition with the Appeals Court in Concepción, based on Article 10 of Law 18.314, which defines terrorist behaviors and establishes the related penalties, in order to initiate the judicial process to investigate and punish those responsible for actions characterized in that submission as terrorist acts. 9. According to the petitioners, the Governor of the province of Bío-Bío related the following events in the submission: 1. On Sunday, March 17, 2002, at approximately 10:00 p.m., in the Guayalí public road sector, a group of five hooded man, one of whom carried a firearm (shotgun), intercepted a truck belonging to the BROTEC company, an ENDESA contractor, and fired into the air to force the driver to get out. They immediately threw a lighted candle inside the vehicle, burning it completely. 2. On September 29, 2001, as established in the proceeding, at approximately 3:20 a.m., two more trucks carrying materials to the Ralco Dam projects were intercepted by a group of six individuals who forced the drivers to get out and then set the vehicles on fire with the help of the fuel they carried. On the same date, these individuals proceeded to throw gasoline at a backhoe that was alongside an area belonging to ENDESA, burning it completely. 3. On March 3, 2002, a truck traveling on the Guayalí road was intercepted by a van. Two hooded men got out of the van, one of whom carried a shotgun and proceeded to shoot into the air in order to frighten the driver and force him to get out of the vehicle and move away. The attackers then sprayed the truck with gasoline and set it on fire, burning it completely.3 10. The petitioners indicate that the preliminary stage of the judicial proceeding ended on April 17, 2003, and an indictment was issued on May 23 of the same year, accusing Victor Manuel Ancalaf of having committed alleged terrorist offenses, offenses defined, according to the petitioners, in Article 2.4 of Law 18.314, as it relates to Article 1 of the same law, with respect to the three events indicated above. The government of Bío-Bío joined the indictment on June 3, 2003 and the defense responded to the indictment on July 7, 2003. 11. The petitioners indicate that the lower court decision was issued on November 30, 2003, and sentenced Víctor Ancalaf to ten years and one day of long-term mid-level imprisonment, as the perpetrator of the terrorist offenses established in Article 2.4 of Law 18.314, 4 as it relates to Article 1 of the same law, committed on September 29, 2001, and March 3 and 17, 2 In the Mapuche sociopolitical organization, the role of the Werken is that of a messenger or spokesperson vis-à-vis other Mapuche communities as well as non-Mapuche society. Together with the Lonko, or chief of the community, they are the leaders at the head of the organization. The existence of these traditional Mapuche roles has been recorded by ethnographers and experts in anthropology, and has been recognized by the Chilean courts. Petitioner’s brief of May 20, 2005. 3 Petition dated March 19, 2002 filed by the Governor of the province of Bío-Bío before the Appeals Court in Concepción. Cited by the petitioners in their brief dated May 20, 2005 4 Law 18.314, Article 1: The offenses listed in Article 2 constitute terrorist offenses when any of the following circumstances apply: 1a The offense is committed with the intention of producing in the population or in a portion thereof a well-founded fear of becoming victim to similar crimes, either due to the nature and effect of the methods used or evidence that it responds to a premeditated plan to attack a specific category or group of people. 2