On January 13, 2026, a Chilean tribunal acquitted former Carabineros commander Claudio Crespo, identified as the shooter who blinded Gustavo Gatica during the 2019 social protests. The ruling relied on legitimate defense under the Penal Code and the 2023 Naín-Retamal Law. While some praise the legal application, Amnesty International denounces it as fostering impunity.
The verdict in the Gustavo Gatica case, delivered on January 13, 2026, has sparked debate in Chile over the application of law in police repression contexts. The tribunal confirmed that Claudio Crespo, a retired lieutenant colonel of Carabineros, was responsible for the shots that blinded Gatica in both eyes during a 2019 protest amid brutal social unrest repression. Yet, it acquitted him by invoking legitimate defense under the Penal Code, without resorting to the Rules of Use of Force (RUF), and applying the Naín-Retamal Law, passed in April 2023 by Congress and the government.
This law requires 'non-compliance with internal regulations' to establish illegal coercion and allows privileged legitimate defense. According to Julio Leiva Molina, retired admiral and former Navy Commander-in-Chief (2017-2021), along with Cristián Araya Escobar, lawyer and retired rear admiral, the ruling shows a strict application of legitimate defense. They argue that if the RUF—with their principles, prohibitions, and obligations—had been in effect, the outcome would likely have been a conviction, viewing them as a 'legal trap' for the Armed Forces in constitutional states of exception.
Conversely, Rodrigo Bustos Bottai, executive director of Amnesty International Chile, rejects the acquittal. In 2023, the organization warned that the 'privileged legitimate defense' clause would limit judicial guarantees for victims of human rights violations, validating disproportionate force use and generating abuses and impunity. Bustos stresses that the regulation is ambiguous and favors the subjective interpretation of the official involved. After the 2019 outbreak, Amnesty called for force use regulation based on legality, necessity, and proportionality, plus deep police reform, but instead, laws were passed that further endanger the right to protest.
Amnesty International will remain vigilant, stating that security cannot be defended at the expense of setbacks in human rights. Chile, they warn, cannot grow accustomed to impunity.
