Luciano Fouillioux, lawyer representing Christian Democracy (DC) in the investigation of the death of former president Eduardo Frei Montalva, knows every detail of the investigation conducted, for 16 years, by Judge Alejandro Madrid. Because of this, after the verdict that the Supreme Court nullified the killing of the former president, he felt nothing but disappointment. A month after that, he said he maintains the conviction that there are resources that will allow the situation to be reversed.
What are the main conclusions you can draw after studying the judgment?
We are very surprised by the final result given by the Supreme Court in the assassination of President Frei Montalva. With all due respect to the ministers, we did not expect reasoning like this. That forces us not to consider this case closed, because we have no doubt that the former president was killed.
The Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court dismissed the homicide…
There are more than enough elements and it’s amazing. Minister Madrid made an 800-page judgment, invested almost 16 years, and investigated almost everything. It was established that even General Pinochet personally followed up, and the day this cause was made public, the country would be silent.
But the alleged culprits were acquitted…
It is considered a common crime and not an assassination of a former president within the framework of crimes against humanity. And that is why there is a set of elements that should lead to the understanding that it will not be exhausted, beyond the enthusiasm of some institutions that do not cooperate at all. I mean the Army and the Catholic University.
What is not considered?
That it was a political decision made from the sphere of General Pinochet and his inner circle, including Manuel Contreras. This was expressed in the process, by Michael Townley and Roberto Thieme, who participated in the organization of the situation of Frei Montalva and Tucapel Jiménez. Carlos Herrera Jiménez was sent to the CNI with instructions to kill Frei. He said this.
Why do you think it wasn’t checked?
It is strange that they removed and removed the expert technical values ​​from the reports of the doctors Claudia Borges and Carmen Cerda, which determined the existence of sarin and thallium gas in the body of the President. A conclusion is forced on false grounds. The reports of the expert panel of the Legal Medical Service are also unknown. Something happens here. Why can two foreign reports, which are not included as medical experts, be more? It has no connection.
Do you see the possibility that the work of Minister Madrid is not well planned?
The possibilities are many. No one asked that everyone applaud and consider Minister Madrid’s work perfect. Because it has more than one drawback. But we have a legitimate right to consider that not only was the investigation done well, but also that these failures were abnormal.
You mentioned that in similar cases the Second Chamber ruled differently. What motives can they have to replace and solve, as you say, in an inexplicable way?
In terms of human rights there is almost no evidence of confessions. All of these, in practice, can be resolved by using judicial presumptions. In this case, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court considered that the requirements of judicial presumptions were not met. The interpretation they made was so wrong that the conclusions of the PDI showed that, according to the police, Frei Montalva’s situation was a homicide. And the medical conclusions also show that it was a murder.
How do you understand the decision to reject homicide?
There are pressures here, I don’t know what. It is difficult for me to understand that the ministers feel pressured, but that there is pressure, there is. Friends and colleagues urged me to drop the case because there was no way they could confirm a murder, which was a hoax. There are retired ministers of the Supreme Court, whom I will not name, who pressured Minister Madrid to drop this case immediately. All these types of situations are very false.
As a former president, did the court ask for a higher standard of proof?
Referring to it as a common crime, and then classifying it as a death resulting from a medical complication ended up being generally less traumatic and easier to understand. Treating it as it should, as a qualified homicide within the framework of crimes against humanity, has changed the history of the institutions involved. The Army, and I know this from firsthand sources, always believed that if any soldier was convicted, they would be included in the core.
Did the court choose to protect the Army?
It doesn’t protect it in some cases, but other cases it doesn’t. And the Catholic University case is no different, because they took a corporate defense action against two professors. It’s not pure coincidence, it’s not pure mistakes. We described it as the biggest intelligence operation ever conducted in this country and where everything went down. The media fell, a good part of the population, at the beginning also the family itself, because no one suggested that there was so much structure. And, unfortunately, the ministers of the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court also fell. I think there is some kind of cover up. And that there is a part of the political right that also participates, not in the execution, but in this type of acquittal work.
How will they seek to reverse this resolution?
We haven’t discussed it at DC, although I have certain background information. And about the family, I spoke with Carmen and Eduardo Frei, and they also evaluated.
