In the southern zone, mainly in the territories of the provinces of Arauco, Malleco and Cautín, since the end of 2002 a series of intelligence operations by police units have been carried out, focused on repressing, criminalizing and intervening in mobilizations for Mapuche territorial rights, mainly on cases involving the interests of landowner groups and forestry companies, in the context of land conflicts.
These operations, in 20 years of application against Mapuche causes, have resulted in murders, multiple injuries and hundreds of arrests, often at the point of set-ups and "false flags", among them: patience operation plan, Tarzan operation plan, operation plan Taurus, hurricane operation plan and Andes operation plan.
Currently, a trial is being carried out against those responsible for the so-called "Hurricane Operation", coordinated from a Carabineros intelligence unit, with political sectors and certain justice operators in 2017. In practice, it generated a wide network of crimes, with Figures range from hundreds to thousands of tapped telephones, fake wathsapp chats, attacks that were actually set-ups, application of the anti-terrorist law and a string of criminalization of numerous Mapuche people.
As of March 2018, charges for illicit association to commit the crimes of forgery of public instrument and obstruction of the investigation, as perpetrators, were brought against former police officers Gonzalo Blu, Patricio Marín and Leonardo Osses, and Engineer Forester, Agricultural Engineer, Master of Business Administration Alex Smith Leay, alleged creator of the software called Torch and Tubicación, used to implant fake text messages on cell phones. Likewise, Marcelo Teuber (former head of the UIOE), Manuel Antonio Riquelme, Marcos Sanhueza, Darwin Vázquez and Marvín Marín were charged with forgery of a public instrument and obstruction of the investigation. For the crime of obstruction of the investigation, Cristián Pérez was formalized.
New filtration gives an account of the types of Carabineros informants on Mapuche students and organizations
The names, addresses and telephone numbers of informants recruited by the Carabineros intelligence in La Araucanía appear in dozens of files that are part of the largest leak of uniformed police documents, to which CIPER had access and recently published a note about it.
The list, according to the media, is made up of Mapuche community members, students, officials from universities, Conadi, Junaeb, municipalities, gendarmes and also a PDI officer.
Ciper points out: "The review of the documents allows us to understand how police officers operate to recruit collaborators, the payments they make in exchange for information and the carelessness with which the Carabineros handle these delicate records."
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Data of 72 Carabineros informants in La Araucanía are exposed in a massive leak of police intelligence files
Ciper Chile
Shortly before 3:00 p.m. on Friday, January 12, 2018, a Carabineros lieutenant arrived at the Portal Temuco shopping center, in the capital of La Araucanía. Her mission was to formalize the link with Paloma (not her real name), a Mapuche community member who had been collaborating for months with the agents of the Carabineros Intelligence Directorate (Dipolcar), who were now interested in recruiting her as an informant. paid.
The details of that meeting appear in the "Recruitment Plan" report, which is part of a massive leak of Dipolcar documents. There are hundreds of thousands of files totaling more than 220 GB of information, to which CIPER had access. The records were analyzed for more than a year and are now presented in this special series of reports under the title "Archivos Secretos de Carabineros" (see here the first installment: "Current General Director of Intelligence was in charge of monitoring student leaders that now arrive at La Moneda”).
The personal data of Paloma, the Mapuche community member who was going to be recruited, are not the only ones that appear in the files reviewed by CIPER. The files contain the background of at least 72 informants or collaborators who operated in La Araucanía between 2008 and 2018. Carabineros did not put access codes to the documents that contain the data of these people or an encryption system to protect their identities, addresses , phones and occupations, so they were exposed with the massive leak. For security reasons, CIPER keeps your names and other personal data confidential.
Among the informants are university officials, students, Mapuche community members and even an operational officer from the PDI, which confirms the competition between the uniformed police and the civilian police, pointed out as one of the problems of the intelligence system in Chile.
Among the accumulation of background information that is part of the leak, there are files with the data of the informants, documents that detail each of the meetings they had with their agents in charge and PowerPoint presentations that show the evolution of the cases where these people would have provided information.
CIPER contacted several people who appear in these Carabineros files, who qualified the version provided by the documents. Paloma, for example, although she acknowledged the meeting at the Temuco mall, pointed out that she never agreed to be an informant. She added that she was harassed by police agents to blame Mapuche community members for events that she did not witness.
It is not strange that those who are part of these circles deny their connection. The informants establish a relationship with the agents that is supposed to be secret. And if that link comes to light, they could be in danger. Paloma told CIPER that if her name was revealed, her family was at risk of death. For this reason, she draws attention to the fact that Carabineros has carelessly handled this data. Although there are documents where the identity of the informant is protected, sometimes her full name is revealed in the title of the file.
According to the "Recruitment Plan" report referring to Paloma, she "provided information of interest to this organization, specifically in the month of September 2017, where she disclosed the identities of Mapuche community members, who would be involved in the attack on ( mentions a transport company), as well as identifying the addresses of each of these, also announced coordination meetings and possible execution of demonstrations related to the visit of His Holiness Francis” (the Pope).
But she denies it: “I never agreed to be an informant. They chased and harassed me, but I refused. They offered me $4 million to give them information about people in my community, for saying that I had seen a community member at a crossroads, but I didn't want to because I never saw that person in that place."
One of the documents about Paloma exposes background information about her personality (“she is a serious, sociable, adaptable, and very careful person”), points out that her motivation for being an informant is “empathy with her recruiter” and also “the economic need for what is going on”. In addition, it establishes the supposed conditions that she set: "That the control agent does not visit her home frequently, that when an interview is carried out, he is the control agent and if he is accompanied, he is the same as always, and that the information that it contributes is worked on and not forgotten”.
Although other informants received payments, the amounts that appear in the files reviewed by CIPER are much lower than the one mentioned by Paloma ($4 million). In some files we find mentions of phone recharges for university students ($5,000), or tickets for the purchase of merchandise supposedly delivered to Mapuche community members, for amounts that do not exceed $15,000.
Until the closing of this report, Carabineros had not answered the questions sent by CIPER to know its official version on the formulas exposed in these documents to recruit and operate with informants, and on the limits that the law imposes on this figure.
INFORMANTS IN THE PDI AND GENDARMERIA
The files show that Dipolcar recruited informants from other institutions in the security area and even from other divisions of the same uniformed police. Only in one document, entitled "Contacts File" and created in 2013, the identity of three of these collaborators is recorded: one from the PDI, another from the Gendarmerie and a policeman who delivers counterintelligence information (see that document here). Although the file dates back nine years, it cannot be ruled out that these relationships continue, since, according to the documents, the informants can establish long-term ties with the agents.
Like the rest of the informant files, this document records the name of the collaborators, their address, RUT, personal telephone number, profession and family background. A box is added with the "level of access" to information handled by the source, its "classification" (whether it is trusted or not) and its Carabineros control agent.
The PDI official, who according to the 2013 registry worked in the Special Police Investigations Brigade (BIPE), is a contact who, according to the revised file, provided data in the "labour, ethnic, environmental-subversive" fields, that it had "high" access to information and that it was "generally trusted."
CIPER asked the Investigative Police if this contact was made under his knowledge and if his institution has any official communication channel with Carabineros intelligence. In its response, the PDI stated that "there are no links" with Dipolcar and that "all officials of intelligence agencies are obliged, by the Intelligence Law, to keep secret the background information they know and the violation of this is a crime".
The civil police explained that it was difficult for the registered official to have access to information related to the "labour, ethnic, environmental-subversive" fields, since the BIPE "is a strictly operational unit, which also investigates crimes such as kidnapping, extortion, terrorist behavior , infractions to the law of arms and explosives and other similar”. However, he added that "if what is stated in the document is proven to be true, administrative and eventually criminal responsibilities can be applied."
Another document found by CIPER shows the competition between the uniformed police and the PDI. Police “Proceedings Report No. 582” of August 2017 explains that a former Army commando became a target for the PDI: “As of Wednesday, August 16, 2017, personnel from the BIPE Araucanía is under monitoring and surveillance, in the Chol Chol sector”, and then lists the background of that former member of the Army who was now being investigated by the civil police.
The conclusion of that report establishes that this person also becomes a target of Carabineros, "until the reason for the monitoring by the PDI is known, in order to corroborate if there is a link to rural violence" (see here).
The Dipolcar documents also list as one of its informants a Gendarmerie major who then, in 2013, worked in the Regional Directorate of the institution in La Araucanía. This person would have provided information related to three areas: "intra-penitentiary, ethnic, counterintelligence." In the file, he was qualified with a "high" level of access to information and as "trustworthy". Although this registry only identifies this Gendarmerie source, CIPER reviewed nearly a dozen documents that, according to Dipolcar, were delivered by gendarmes. Among these records are the visits received in prison by Mapuche community members accused of acts of violence, such as Celestino Córdova, convicted of the fire that resulted in the death of the Luchsinger Mackay couple.
Many Dipolcar reports show how Carabineros determined new targets of interest among those who visit prisoners, initiating follow-ups to learn about their links and activities.
Regarding this background, the Gendarmerie pointed out that “the facts that are reported are considered serious by our institution, since the coordination link between the police and the Chilean Gendarmerie is of an inter-institutional nature, and not collaborators or individual informants. All antecedents that are related to what has been denounced must be investigated through the mechanisms defined in the respective legal framework.”
In its response to CIPER, the Communications Unit of the National Directorate of the Gendarmerie explained that “there is an inter-institutional collaboration relationship between the Chilean Gendarmerie and the bodies and services that are part of the State Intelligence System, including the Intelligence Agency. National Intelligence and Police Intelligence Directorates, within the framework of current regulations (...). In this sense, all the information that is generated from the Gendarmerie to the intelligence system, mainly associated with the public security of the State, is framed in the current regulations, keeping the due secrecy of the same.
INFORMANTS IN UNIVERSITIES
In another document, dated April 18, 2011, just when the protests of the student movement began demanding quality and non-profit education, the then intelligence section (Sipolcar) of Cautín (La Araucanía), transferred three contacts to the student area. who originally collaborated in the ecological area. The intelligence work of the Carabineros is divided into different areas, in addition to the ecological and the student, there are also ethnic, labor, population, subversive, etc.
Those three contacts that were being transferred corresponded to officials of the Catholic University of Temuco (UCT). The Carabineros agent in charge of controlling them was identified as “Claudia”. The document mentions that "as a result of the various demonstrations carried out by the students of the Catholic University of Temuco, it was possible to have as a contact in that area those in charge of (mentions a work area) of said university."
The report specifies the names, positions within the university, telephone numbers and emails of the three contacts. And it is detailed that they "when registering any disorder, banners or posters inside the UCT", communicate these facts "by phone or via text messages" (see that document here).
CIPER contacted the highest-ranking UCT official mentioned in that report:
-We had a relationship with Carabineros, because they maintain preventive drug programs and all that. Surely, there in the conversation with them other topics came up, but not with the figure that you mention to me. Because imagine, I was the trusted person of the students.
-Isn't it true that you notified Dipolcar when posters appeared at the university or marches were held?
-Once, perhaps, we could have done it, but it was not something systematic or that was agreed with them. We cannot deliver any information about students without the permission of the general secretariat of the university.
He added that he maintained that relationship with Carabineros until the end of 2014.
Frontis campus John Paul II of the Catholic University of Temuco
From the UCT they pointed out to CIPER that in 2011 there were other directing authorities and that they have no record of campus officials having been recruited by Carabineros. As to whether they maintain some type of coordination with police intelligence agents, they assured that “currently there is no permanent type of coordination with the characteristics that you point out. We only coordinate actions and/or complaints with Police, PDI or the Prosecutor's Office, as appropriate, when the occurrence of events that could be considered a crime has been verified, and this is limited. Finally, it should be noted that the information of our students, officials and academics is treated as sensitive personal information, in such a way that we only deliver it when the legal grounds for it are verified, such as, for example, a judicial requirement.
There are also documents with data from students who were recruited as informants. This is the case of Pedro (not his real name), who met with a Carabineros agent on the morning of May 24, 2012. The meeting took place at the “Como en casa” fast food restaurant, located in the center of Temuco.
Pedro lived in the Pelontuwe Student Home, for young Mapuche who studied at the University of La Frontera (UFRO). According to the documents, at the first meeting they suggested that he infiltrate the CAM Support Network as a listener and he gave the name of the person who was leading that group at the time. They gave him another mission:
“Some work guidelines were given to him, in order to retrieve useful information to process it and evaluate its continuity in the system. These consist of collecting cell phones, identification of regular radical students and residents of the Hogar Mapuche Pelontuhue (SIC), and the university where he is studying (mentions his academic unit)”. At the end of that meeting, the agent would have given him money to charge his cell phone and for food (see the full report here).
A week after the first meeting with Pedro, the agents had no news of the student, so they decided to look for him: "On Avenida Germany with Thiers Street, the decision was made to approach him on public roads," says another report. He told them that "his cell phone was bad and that the emails went by for several days and he didn't check them", but that everything was "cool". That document reports that he "expressed his interest in continuing to have primary aid (food) and the need to have a cell phone." The report ends by pointing out that Pedro is afraid to take over as an informant (see here).
A third report related to Pedro is from June 2012. Carabineros reports that he approached him again on the street (this time in Prieto Norte) and that the young man decided to be a "mercenary informant." They agreed to a meeting two days later to “coordinate tasks” (see here).
INFORMANTS IN MAPUCHE COMMUNITIES
Many of the informants registered in Dipolcar documents between 2008 and 2018 periodically or circumstantially provided data on Mapuche communities and organizations. Then, the police intelligence prepared "contact reports" with the most relevant and decided if it was worth delving into the information provided.
The network of collaborators was made up of closed sources from the monitored communities themselves, their neighbors, people linked to the ecclesiastical world, from the municipalities, from Conadi, and Junaeb. A close relative of a parliamentarian also appears in the records. In a conversation with CIPER, this person pointed out that he has never acted as an informant, and that like any citizen, he has circumstantially communicated with the Carabineros to deliver information related to security.
To keep track of this network, the police created files with their personal information, including names, nicknames, addresses, occupations, contact numbers, criminal records and the area in which they could be useful.
The reviewed files provide clues about how the collaborators were booked and under what conditions they worked for Carabineros. Pablo (not his real name), for example, lived in Padre las Casas and his first records as an informant date from 2008. The last document written by Dipolcar with information provided by him is from June 2015. Labeled as "secret" , in that file it is mentioned that this person "had already provided information in relation to the Ethnic Social Contingency, referring to the different associations of a Mapuche character that (...) integrates"
In the 2015 report, Pablo gave the telephone number of community member Sergio Catrilaf Marilef, a name that he entered on the Carabineros radar in 2009, when he starred in a roadblock on Route 5 South, at the height of Padre Las Casas. . He was accused of attacking a Tur Bus company vehicle and after participating in the arson attack against the Luchsinger Mackay couple in 2013. He was investigated and acquitted in both court cases. The documents reviewed indicate that another informant signed by Dipolcar, who provided data in 2016 and 2017, had the sole mission of collecting information on the location of Catrilaf.
The same report written in 2015 with data provided by Pablo, states that as he maintains "constant communication with personnel from this patrol", he was given $10,000 for his "good predisposition" (see here).
Payment in money or material species to collaborators was a widespread practice in Dipolcar, according to the files reviewed by CIPER. A June 2015 report recounts a meeting with a Mapuche informant who belonged to a Carahue community. At the appointment, the agents asked him about the José Loncoli community and he told them that the community members had stopped harassing the Fundo Toquihue. The informant added that the community's idea was to obtain ownership, through Conadi, of two other neighboring properties. And that in this work they were being advised by a councilor from Carahue. At the end of the meeting, the agents gave him merchandise valued at $8,770.
If on the one hand there are the “mercenary informants”, who deliver information in exchange for small sums of money, merchandise or cell phone recharges, on the other are the collaborators, who deliver data sporadically and whose motivation is not necessarily material.
Among the dozens of documents reviewed for this investigation, there are the stories of a general manager of a logging company in Galvarino, who promised to provide the identity of the inhabitants of the Antonio Peñeipil Cuel Ñielol community; of a person who in 2016 reported that he had seen Fidel Tranamil at a barbecue - a target of intelligence interest -, providing photographs of the event; of a woman resident of Quepe, accused of being a “Mapuche leader”, who in 2010 was booked as a collaborator in the “ethnic area”; or from an unidentified source who reported on February 10, 2014 that escorts of President Sebastián Piñera went to La Araucanía International Airport, in Freire, to carry out a pre-landing inspection that the president would do 15 days later, when he was received in the middle of of demonstrations by community members claiming that the new air terminal was built on land they consider sacred.
RECRUITMENT MANUAL
Among the files that were exposed, there is an informant recruitment manual, dated 2005. After identifying people with access to information of interest, says the document, "it is necessary to carry out a thorough investigation of him or them, covering topics such as family, employment status, criminal or police record, of him and his family, economic income, religion, social contact, political affinity (...). One of the most relevant aspects of that investigation was "to find some vulnerable aspect of his person, a necessary tool for our purposes."
The manual explains that the vulnerabilities serve to find out the motivation of the person who is going to deliver information, which can vary: “family welfare”, “revenge”, “patriotism”, “adventurous spirit”, “need to be heard ” or “desire to be recognized”, among others.
The text also details various types of agent "approaches." One possibility is a "dry" contact, where there is no previous work. The other is a “progressive approach”, with several meetings before revealing the true intentions: “In the last meeting this possibility must be openly raised. If accepted, the need to subordinate to the controller, follow some security procedures. (The informant) will have to get used to clandestine activities and to act covertly”.
The document delves into each step agents must take after recruiting an informant. And despite the fact that the manual initially indicates that blackmail is "prohibited", it later states that "blackmail, although not recommended, serves to retain an informant after they have been recruited" (see that document in detail here).
Excerpt from an informant's recruitment manual, agent-oriented
AN INFORMER IN THE CHURCH
Among Dipolcar's usual collaborators, “Juan” stands out, alias of a source with access to information linked to the Catholic Church and classified as “A-1”, due to the quality of the information he provides.
"Juan" was the basis for two reports that intelligence drafted in 2008 and 2009 on the priest Fernando Díaz Fernández, a Divine Word missionary who works in Quepe and who has made public his support for Mapuche communities and his criticism of the police in cases of high public connotation.
In those reports, “Juan” identified Díaz as a parish priest from Metrenco and as a person with “dark ties”, pointing to the CAM. He also said that Díaz hindered the investigative work of the Carabineros and the PDI after the murder of Matías Catrileo (which occurred in January 2008); that he was visited by the ex-wife of a community member followed by the Department of Investigation of Criminal Organizations of the uniformed police (OS9); and that he participated in a meeting together with the then Bishop of Temuco, Manuel Camilo Vial, and officials from the Institute Indigenous -founded by the Diocese of Villarrica-, in which they discussed a debt that this foundation contracted for $200 million.
"Ultimately, and based on previous reports on the subject, in JUAN's opinion, there are two money leaks from the Church, which, as mentioned above, benefit the parish priest FERNANDO DIAZ FERNANDEZ," the report concludes.
CIPER contacted Fernando Díaz to find out his version of these accusations and ask him if he knew that Carabineros had an informant who reported his actions: “Everything that is related in those reports is totally false and shows that the investigative quality established by Carabineros through this collaborator is primitive.”
Díaz clarified that he has never been the parish priest of Metrenco, but instead provides liturgical services in Quepe. Furthermore, he denies having hindered the investigation into Catrileo's death:
-As soon as I heard about the news, I spoke with don Camilo (Vial) and don Sixto (Parzinger), then bishops of Temuco and Villarrica, respectively, and we agreed to support the family and the communities that after that were constantly harassed through very violent raids. What's more, I collaborated with the PDI detective who later proved that there was never a confrontation, but rather that it was an attack by Carabineros that killed Catrileo. To say that I hindered or dedicated myself to the police doing their job wrong is an aberration, someone rightfully invented it.
Regarding the institutional "leakage of money" from which he would benefit, and about his possible links with the CAM, Díaz affirms that "the debt mentioned in the report ($200 million) was produced by very bad internal management of the Indigenous Institute, but that in no case is due to transfers of money to me or to another person. Raising that, and that I have a connection with the CAM, makes me think that it is a narrative invented exclusively to tarnish the work of the Church with communities. In addition, these meetings are given a very private character, when they were public instances in which we did not have, nor do we have, anything to hide.
Fernando Díaz said that within the ecclesiastical environment in which he operates "the possibility of being 'pricked' or spied on was discussed, but we have never taken it seriously, because we have nothing to hide."