MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Jones Huala must leave Chile at the earliest

Jones Huala first needs to recover from a 50-day hunger strike

Argentine-born Mapuche rebel Facundo Jones Huala must leave Chile as soon as he is discharged from the hospital where he was admitted after going on a hunger strike for 50 days to demand his freedom which the Supreme Court granted last week, the authorities in Santiago ruled last Friday.

The Ancestral Mapuche Resistance (RAM) gangster was deemed to have served out his sentence in June when the time he spent at Argentine detention facilities pending extradition was counted. He is expected to return to Argentina, according to family sources.

However, Security Minister Patricia Bullrich warned him: “Jones Huala: I hope you have it very clear. If you choose to return to the country to commit crimes or disturb public order, your destiny is clear: you will go to prison. We will not allow anyone to threaten the safety of good Argentines,” she wrote on social media. He had been convicted in Chile for arson and illegally carrying a firearm in 2013.

The 38-year-old Jones Huala was said to be weak and on IV support at the Intercultural Hospital of Nueva Imperial, in the southern province of Cautín, in the Mapuche-conflict-ridden Araucanía Region.

Since Chile's Supreme Court admitted that Jones Huala had remained incarcerated beyond his sentence and “illegally deprived of his freedom,” he has also been reported to be planning to seek compensation from Chilean authorities, it was explained.

After being extradited to Chile for the first time, Jones Huala was granted parole on Jan. 21, 2022, but that benefit was revoked and he fled back to Argentina where he was recaptured in 2023 and extradited once again.