The Oral Criminal Court in Temuco issued a guilty verdict against six of eleven defendants in the Operation Hurricane case for using false information against Mapuche community members in 2017. All were acquitted of the charge of illicit association. The sentencing will be announced on April 2.
The Operation Hurricane case, one of the most serious scandals in Chile's Carabineros police force, moved toward closure on January 9, 2026, in the Temuco Oral Criminal Court. Judges Rocío Pinilla, Patricia Abollado, and Javier Bascur established that six of the eleven accused, members of the Specialized Operational Intelligence Unit (UIOE) in La Araucanía in 2017, committed crimes of obstruction of justice and falsification of public documents to pursue Mapuche community members for alleged acts of violence.
The convicted individuals are former General Gonzalo Blu Rodríguez, ex-national head of Intelligence; former Major Patricio Marín Lazo; former Captain Leonardo Osses Sandoval; civilian Alex Schmidt Leay, known as 'the professor'; former General Marcelo Teuber; and Manuel Riquelme from Labocar. Blu faces three counts of obstruction and five of falsification, while Marín and Schmidt were responsible for designing and executing the setup.
The trial, lasting over 150 days since March 2025, revealed that in 2017 Carabineros fabricated evidence in an operation that captured supposed terrorists, including CAM leader Héctor Llaitul. The community members were released months later upon discovery of the deception, reversing roles: the investigators became defendants.
All accused were acquitted of illicit association, as the court found insufficient evidence from the Public Ministry. "The court has acquired the conviction that the established facts indeed occurred within the Specialized Operational Intelligence Unit (...), with actual intent to know and commit each of the accredited crimes," states the resolution.
Five defendants—Marvin Marín, Cristián Pérez, Marcos Sanhueza, Darwin Vásquez, and Manuel Cavieres—were acquitted of the charges. After the verdict, Blu's lawyer, Cristián Arias, criticized the Public Ministry: "The only one who cannot be proud of this verdict is the Public Ministry, which invented an illicit association to involve my client in this whole plot, and the oral court discredited that supposed illicit association outright." He pointed to prosecutor Carlos Palma as responsible for the false accusation.
The sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 2 at 10 a.m.
