SANTIAGO – Chilean President Michelle Bachelet expressed her regrets Friday for the murder of two Carabineros – members of Chile’s militarized police – in a possible clash with livestock thieves this Thursday in the area they were patrolling near the Peruvian border, according to the deputy secretary of the interior, Mahmud Aleuy.“We very sorrowfully learned of the death of these Carabineros while on duty guarding the security of our land. We very much regret their passing,” the president said at the signing of a bill that will toughen penalties for crimes of great social significance.
Bachelet said the bill “is a tribute to people who, like these murdered Carabineros, give their lives so we can live in peace.”
Aleuy also referred to the death of the two officers of the Carabineros and said that the “most reasonable” hypothesis up to now is that the killing was a result of a “clash with rustlers,” since there have been reports of vicunas being stolen in the area of the killings.
Though the motive of the murders is still unknown, the suspicion is growing that they were related to “the trafficking of vicunas on the nation’s border,” the prosecutor of Arica and Parinacota, Carlos Eltit, said in a statement on Radio ADN.
According to Aleuy, the only possibility discarded up to now is that the slaying of the Carabineros, who were patrolling the highway between Visviri and Tacora in Parinacota province, came as the result of a clash with uniformed Peruvian personnel.
Starting this Thursday, a special squad of the Peruvian National Police has been carrying out search operations on the Peruvian side of the border with Chile to try and find the killers of the two police officers and investigate the circumstances of their deaths.
The bodies of the two Carabineros were found this Thursday, after the officers failed to return from a patrol mission in the Chilluma sector, at some 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the Peruvian border.
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