MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile: Presidential pardonee arrested for kidnapping

Boric had promised to assume the pardons responsibly

A rioter who had been convicted for his involvement in the 2019 uprisings and later pardoned by Chilean President Gabriel Boric Font was arrested Thursday by Carabineros in Copiapó on kidnapping charges.

Luis Castillo participated in the movement that catapulted Boric to notoriety and eventually landed him the Palacio de la Moneda job.

Castillo was driving a car with three other accomplices while the victim was found inside the trunk, it was reported.

Copiapó Prosecutor Christian González Carriel said further details about the ongoing probe were to be kept confidential for the time being. “This investigation has been declared reserved from now on by the Prosecutor's Office,” he told reporters.

“The Local Prosecutor's Office of Copiapó, with the prosecutor on duty and this concurrence prosecutor, has been constituted with the Homicide Organized Crime Team to investigate an alleged kidnapping that would have occurred last night at a gas station, whose victim would have been rescued by Carabineros today,” he also explained.

“There are four detainees and there is a victim and that is all the information that we are going to deliver because we want to be responsible until we have clarity about the way the facts occurred and about the participation of the accused,” he added while declining to confirm whether Castillo was among those apprehended.

Chilean opposition leaders have raised their voices against President Boric without whom Castillo would have remained jailed and could have thus never perpetrated the kidnapping. The head of state was said to be an “accomplice” of Castillo's and found “politically responsible.” They insisted a public apology was in order.

“If it is proven that the pardoned Luis Castillo is involved in a kidnapping, President Boric must apologize to all of Chile because he told us that he had not pardoned a criminal and that he had done so after a deep process of reflection,” Senator Manuel José Ossandón stressed. “Castillo is clearly not a social fighter, but a criminal,” he went on.

Meanwhile, Congressman Andrés Celis did not rule out filing a constitutional accusation against the president who “pardoned a criminal, someone he was warned was going to continue committing crimes.”

At the time, Boric insisted he had granted the pardons “thinking of the good of the country” because “we have to heal these wounds, here we live a process that was tremendously complex and where these are young people who are not criminals. It is a personal commitment, these are complex decisions, but I assume them responsibly.”