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rom refractario, translated by waronsociety:
On December 7, 2012, Hans Niemeyer decided to break house arrest in the face of a new revocation and return to preventive prison. Hans was arrested in December 2011 accused under the anti-terrorist law of participating in several placements of explosive devices.
After almost 4 months on the run and sending out several statements from underground, Hans was arrested on April 26, 2013, in an apartment in Villa Portales, a neighborhood in Central Station, Santiago, after the Investigative Police followed his partner.
After Hans’ arrest, various mouthpieces of power and the prosecution came out to celebrate. Remember that Hans’ intention from the beginning was to present himself to the courts on May 6 (the initial date of the trial which was then postponed after his clandestinity).
The Minister of the Interior, Andrés Chadwick, visiting the zone of the Mapuche conflict, said: “It is very positive that Mr. Niemeyer has been arrested (…) Even though he previously bragged that the police were not going to find him and made a series of boasts, he ended up being arrested (…) Mr. Niemeyer showed off a lot about his situation, that the police weren’t looking for him or were not going to find him and he was going to go walking in to the courts of justice.”
For his part, the National Prosecutor Sabas Chahuan sought a clumsy link with Emilio Berkhoff, who is also underground for crimes in the framework of the Mapuche conflict. According to the police and the prosecution, Hans was in the south during his clandestinity and Emilio lived in the south. This is sufficient reason to suppose their possible link: meetings, delusions and terrorist fantasies. So it is said that this hypothetical encounter “must be investigated.”
The prosecutor, Raul Guzmán, chief of the southern prosecution, said with respect to the residence where he was found: “It pertained to a person who was linked to the accusation, he wasn’t renting out the house, he only came at night to sleep at this residence and probably went to stay a couple of days in this residence and then left to change to another one.” For this reason he said neither the owners of the residence nor Hans’ partner were arrested or charged.
Guzmán started to throw out statements as an iron defender of the imposed order “It is the own functioning of the democratic system in which there exist institutions that fulfill functions, the courts to judge, the Prosecution to investigate and the police to fulfill the orders of the Prosecution during the investigation (…) It is a victory for society to be able to bring these facts before the courts so those responsible may be judged and sanctioned.”
Finally, after Hans’ arrest the Seventh Oral Court in the Santiago Prison announced that the Trial remained set for June 17th at 9 am in the (in)justice center, with Hans again staying in preventive prison in the High Security Prison.
Hans’ defense lawyer, Rodrigo Román, said: “We believe that there is an affectation to the right to be judged in a reasonable time period, because the system has to explain to a citizen what are the administrative reasons, he had to wait 50 days for it without any justification.”
Also, Julio Cortes, Hans’ other lawyer, gave an interview to the press which you can listen to here.
Related news about Hans Niemeyer here.
