Chilean Cop Caught on Tape Telling Comrade to Shoot at Indians

SANTIAGO - A recording made public this week reveals an exchange in which one policeman tells another to open fire on a group of Indians who occupied a ranch in southern Chile, just minutes before a university student was shot dead.

"Fire at them," police special forces officer Walter Ramirez Espinoza is heard urging a comrade on the tape divulged Thursday on the Web site of El Austral, a newspaper in the Araucania region.

Araucania, some 600 kilometers (370 miles) south of Santiago, has been the scene of long-running disputes between Mapuche communities struggling to recover their ancestral lands from farmers and lumber firms, with the conflicts often turning violent.

"They're attacking the ranch from the back. It looks like there are about 20 (people)," was the first message received by the communications center of Carabineros - Chile's militarized national police - during the operation that unfolded in the wee hours of Jan. 3, 2008.

Ramirez, who was enforcing a protection order that prosecutors had issued for the owner of the Santa Margarita estate, Jorge Luchsinger, was in the vicinity of the ranch. He currently is being investigated by military prosecutors in connection with the slaying of university student Matias Catrileo, who was shot in the back.

The recording continues with Ramirez asking what weapons were being used to attack the ranch, to which a fellow officer responds" "with arms, rocks and they're burning fires they had here, but in the back."

The Carabineros communications center is then informed that "in total there are approximately 16 bonfires inside the property" and later a message comes through that a Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco sign was spotted in the area.

That group, known as the CAM, is one of the most active Mapuche organizations in the area and several of their members have been tried and convicted for arson attacks.

The recording was obtained as part of expert's investigation ordered by the attorney representing Catrileo's family, Jaime Madariaga, who said it demonstrates intent to kill in the Carabineros operation.

The student's death touched off violent protests by members of human rights groups and non-governmental organizations in Santiago and in towns of southern Chile that support the Mapuche cause, leading to several arrests.

The Mapuches, Chile's largest indigenous group with slightly more than 600,000 members, demand the constitutional recognition of their tribal identity, rights and culture, as well as ownership of the lands that belonged to their ancestors. EFE