151. On August 19, 2004, the parties were informed that Mr. Ancalaf Llaupe’s defense had
filed a remedy of complaint before the Supreme Court of Justice requesting the invalidation of
the sentence convicting him owing to serious error or abuse when adopting the decision. On
November 22, 2004, the Supreme Court of Justice rejected the appeal on the grounds that “the
judges ha[d] not incurred in the serious errors or abuses that were alleged and that could be
rectified by […] [a remedy of complaint].”
d)
Prison sentence served
152. Mr. Ancalaf Llaupe began to serve his sentence on November 16, 2002; he was granted
an allowance for the time spent in pre-trial detention, from November 6, 2002, until the
judgment of June 4, 2004. While serving his sentence, he was granted the prison benefits of
“weekend release” and “supervised release.” On February 15, 2007, the Ministry of Justice
issued Decree No. 633, reducing Mr. Ancalaf Llaupe’s intimal sentence by eight months, which
meant that he was released on March 7, 2007.155
VII – MERITS
153. The instant case refers to alleged violations suffered by the eight presumed victims
related to their criminal prosecution and conviction for offenses of a terrorist nature. The
presumed victims were leaders, members or an activist of the Mapuche indigenous people. The
Court must decide whether the criminal law applied to them (the Counter-terrorism Act)
violated the principle of legality and must also rule on whether, during the criminal
proceedings, various judicial guarantees were violated, and whether the pre-trial detention
ordered violated their right to personal liberty. The Court must also rule on the allegations
made by the Inter-American Commission and the common interveners that the ethnic origin
of the presumed victims was supposedly taken into consideration in order to apply the said
criminal law to them in a discriminatory manner within the context of an alleged pattern of
“selective application of the anti-terrorist law to members of the Mapuche indigenous people,”
as a result of which the social protest of members of this indigenous people was allegedly
criminalized.156
154. The analysis of the presumed violations of the American Convention will be divided into
the following four parts, related to the articles indicated in each case:
VII.1: Principle of legality and presumption of innocence (Articles 9 and 8(2) of the
Convention),
VII.2: Equality before the law (Article 24 of the Convention) and judicial guarantees
(Article 8(1), 8(2)(f) and 8(2)(h) of the Convention);
VII.3: Right to personal liberty in relation to the pre-trial detention (Articles 7(1), 7(3),
7(5) and 8(2) of the American Convention), and
155
Cf. Minutes of the meeting of the technical committee of the Victoria Prison held on December 22, 2006; Minutes of
the meeting of the technical committee of the Victoria Prison held on January 17, 2007; Decree No. 633 of February 15,
2007, issued by the Chilean Ministry of Justice; Report on the prison conditions of the persons involved in the Case of Norín
Catrimán et al. v. Chile (file of helpful evidence presented by the State, folios 63 to 66 and 1523 to 1531), and judgment
delivered on December 30, 2003, by the investigating judge of the Concepción Court of Appeal, thirteenth and fourteenth
consideranda (file of annexes to the Merits Report 176/10, annex 20, folios 718 to 759).
156
Merits Report 176/10, paras. 1, 5, 211 and 289; CEJIL brief with motions, arguments and evidence, and FIDH brief
with motions, arguments and evidence (merits file, Tome I, folios 2, 10, 11, 67, 76, 97, 269, 270, 351, 352, 401, 425, 507,
and 515).
51
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