On Monday, November 3rd, the trial against Aldo and Lucas Hernandez came to an end, with both being sentenced to 21 and 12 years in prison, respectively, after more than three months of hearings, in which the authorities attempted to use all their power to achieve an exemplary punishment for both brothers.
On July 21st of this year, amid protests and multiple solidarity actions, the lengthy trial against Aldo and Lucas Hernandez began at the Center for (In)Justice in Santiago. The prosecution, made up of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Chilean Gendarmerie, initially demanded intolerably excessive sentences, ranging from 20 years in prison for Lucas to 90 years in prison for Aldo Hernandez.
Subsequently, after the verdict was read on October 3, the prosecutors requested a sentence of 32 years and 1,100 days for Aldo and a sentence of 18 years and 800 days for Lucas, while Aldo’s defense requested a sentence of 26 years and Lucas’s defense requested a sentence of 12 years. Finally, on November 3, Aldo was sentenced to 21 years and Lucas to 12 years.
The sentences, set out in a document of more than 400 pages, referred to three incidents: 1) the attack on the General Directorate of the Gendarmerie in December 2021; 2) the raid on a residence in Loncura; and 3) the raid on a residence in La Victoria.
Aldo Hernandez was found guilty of the attack on the Gendarmerie Headquarters but acquitted of the crimes of minor injuries to prison guards and the crime of receiving stolen goods. He was also found guilty in relation to the items found in the raid on Loncura ( incident 2) but was acquitted of all the crimes he was charged with in relation to the raid on the home in La Victoria ( incident 3). Lucas, for his part, was convicted of most of the crimes related to the residence in the La Victoria neighborhood, but was acquitted of the crimes of manufacturing weapons and manufacturing explosive devices.
On behalf of Aldo’s defense, attorney Washington Lizana, in communication with La Zarzamora, stated:
“Our overall assessment is positive. Although not all of the defense’s objectives were clearly achieved, if we analyze it in relation to the prosecution’s case and the claims of the public prosecutor’s office, we returned to a more reasonable situation. I think that’s the word. We have to start from the basis that the prosecution’s case against Aldo and Lucas was based on a request for a sentence of more than 100 years in Aldo’s case and 26 years in Lucas’s case… The prosecutor charged them with several crimes, 16 crimes grouped into three different incidents, one of which occurred on December 27, 2021: the planting and detonation of explosives at the National Gendarmerie Headquarters by two individuals traveling on a motorcycle, and several crimes related to that main incident, plus two incidents that occurred on December 22, 2022, in the context of various entries and searches of several properties related to the investigation of incident number 1. Incident number 2 was linked to items found at a residence in the municipality of Quinteros, and incident number 3 was linked to items found at a residence in Pedro Aguirre Cerda. Sixteen crimes were related to Aldo Hernandez, of which the court acquitted him of 10 crimes and convicted him of 6, two from incident 1 and four from inIn this regard, a ruling that partially upholds the Public Prosecutor’s claim and is 20 percent of the total sentence requested.cident number 2. It acquitted him of all crimes from incident number 3 related to Aldo.”
Regarding the outcome of this trial and in relation to the increase in the length of sentences handed down in recent trials of comrades, he added:
“It is a step forward. It was not ideal, it was not the objective of this defense, but it puts the situation, the framework of criminal prosecution, in a more reasonable scenario. In this sense, we must consider that this trial is taking place in a social context characterized by a punitive fever, an exacerbation of the media and various state agencies, the criminalization of political and social organizations that confront the state, more direct confrontation, and the manipulation of public opinion in this policy of accentuating criminalization. It was a difficult scenario, and we had seen that in recent years, in the latest cases related to these crimes, the penalties had reached irrational levels. For example, in the case of Camilo Gajardo, which was in 2017-2018, there was a trial related to that young man, and the prosecution in this same court obtained a sentence of 43 years. In this same court, a couple of years ago, there was also the conviction of Francisco Solar, of 86 years. So, of course, the prosecution, based on those criminal penalties, emphasized its demands for punishment, its punitive demands, its strategy of criminal prosecution, and wanted to repeat the same scenario here in the same court with very, very increased penalties, with multiple charges, and I believe that with this ruling, the court is putting things in their place.”
It should be noted that both brothers were arrested on December 22, 2022, at their home in the La Victoria neighborhood, after being investigated by the Southern Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office in connection with the attack on the Gendarmerie Headquarters (2021). The investigation was entrusted to OS9, Gope, and Labocar in order to incriminate the brothers, who were then considered persons of interest. It should also be mentioned that these raids were witnessed and experienced by children, who were exposed to the violence of the repressive forces, which could have been avoided.
After this reading of the sentence, further legal action cannot be ruled out, following its study and analysis.
source: Dark Nights