55 195. When the criminal case prosecuted against Juan Patricio Marileo Saravia, Florencio Jaime Marileo Saravia, Patricia Roxana Troncoso Robles, José Benicio Huenchunao Mariñán and Juan Ciriaco Millacheo Licán is looked at as a whole, one finds that the Angol oral criminal trial court followed a line of reasoning similar to the line of reasoning it followed in the case against Pascual Pichún and Aniceto Norín in the sense that the crimes under investigation were classified as terrorist offenses based on context-related considerations having to do with the so-called “Mapuche conflict”. Thus, in the conviction handed down on August 22, 2004, the Court presents a detailed outline of the evidence in the case file; then, in Consideranda 14, it proceeds to describe the criminal acts that the court deems to have been proven. Number six reads as follows: [i]t is a public and notorious fact that in 2001, persons associated with or belonging to the Mapuche ethnic group, using violent means to get their demands and territorial claims, assaulted persons, property, buildings, vehicles and machinery owned by private persons or businesses set up in various geographic areas of the province of Malleco, which had negative consequences for public safety and tranquility, the physical integrity of the citizens, and development in the area. The fire at 203 the Poluco Pidenco tree farm fit into the conflict dynamic. 196. Based on grounds such as these, in Consideranda 16 the Court concluded that the actions that had been proven constituted crimes under the Anti-Terrorism Act; in Consideranda 17, it made reference to evidence that supposedly proved that the defendants were the material authors of the fires, but made no reference to their intent to commit a terrorist crime; instead the court spoke of their material participation in setting the fire. Then, in Consideranda 19, the Court listed the reasons why the crimes were classified as terrorist offenses, and did so by alluding to the context in the region, which it referred to as the “Mapuche conflict.” It wrote that the fire which occurred on December 19, 2001, “does qualify as a terrorist offense, inasmuch as the actions that underlie these crimes demonstrate that the form, methods and strategies employed had a malicious intent, which was to instill a generalized fear in the area, a situation that is a public and notorious fact that these judges cannot ignore; this is a serious conflict between a portion of the Mapuche ethnic group and the rest of the population, a fact neither argued by the parties nor unknown to them.” For the court, the facts of the case –which it deemed to have been proven- had to be “viewed against the backdrop” of the Mapuche conflict. It wrote that “the crime established in Consideranda 16 must be viewed against the backdrop of a process of recovering Mapuche lands, in which the perpetrators took direct action, without respecting the existing legal and institutional order” and by recourse to violent actions committed by radicalized groups in the Province of Malleco, the purpose of which was to use violence to make demands of farmers and tree farmers in the area to get them to abandon their lands. In the court’s view, “[t]he obvious inference is that the objective is to instill in the population a well-founded fear of falling victim to similar crimes.” 197. As for the conviction of Víctor Ancalaf Llaupe, the court’s reasons for regarding the crimes as terrorist offenses were based on testimony and reports from authorities in which reference is made to the measures taken by certain members of the Mapuche indigenous people to oppose construction of the Ralco hydroelectric plant. The Commission notes that the testimony and reports in 204 question make reference to other persons, but never name Víctor Ancalaf. Having set out what the 203 According to what the court wrote in the judgment, the testimony taken into account described a general context. As the verdict of conviction states: “Witnesses César Gutiérrez Chávez, Ricardo Martín Ruff, Víctor Luengo San Martín, Gerardo Cerda Agurto, Juan Zapata Acuña, Mario Garbarini Barra, Gerardo Jequier Schalchi said that they had been victims of various crimes committed by Mapuches from communities near their properties or the land they worked. Union leaders Manuel Riesco Jaramillo, René Araneda Amigo and Juan Correa Búlnes said that they were aware that landowners and businessmen in the area were fearful that they might also be killed or injured, that damage might be done to their property, buildings, machinery and vehicles, by the violent actions undertaken by some Mapuche groups and communities in order to recover land that they claimed for themselves. This version was confirmed by the attorney from the Ministry of the Interior, Jorge Vives, who stated that the political authority is aware of these actions that undermine the rule of law; by prosecuting them, the government is simply fulfilling its obligation to ensure and maintain order and public safety.” 204 The testimony and reports in question include (i) a police report stating that in the past, there have been episodes of violence in the sector related to the construction of the Ralco Hydroelectric Plant, which “have caused people outside the Pehuenche communities to sympathize with the indigenous people in the fight against the State and Endesa”, that these episodes “have formed the springboard of a symbolic struggle” waged by a small group of Mapuche persons who loudly oppose the projects; the three fires under investigation fit the same pattern of organization and modus operandi, and (ii) a report by the Chilean National