Facundo Jones Huala, in a file photo.
The Argentine Mapuche leader Facundo Jones Huala, a fugitive from Chilean Justice since February 2022, was arrested this Monday in southern Argentina.
In 2018, Jones Huala was sentenced to nine years in prison for burning a house in Chilean Patagonia and carrying firearms, but after being released on parole a year ago, he fled and his whereabouts were unknown.
In Argentina, he became known for leading the Mapuche occupation of 500 hectares of the more than 900,000 that Benetton owns in Argentine Patagonia.
Jones Huala, 35, was detained by police at dawn in the shed of a house in El Bolsón, in the Argentine province of Río Negro.
The agents arrived at the home due to a neighbor's call and found the Mapuche leader alone and drunk, according to the provincial authorities.
Jones Huala did not resist and was taken to a police station.
The Argentine government awaits an extradition request from Chile.
If he does not arrive within 24 hours, Jones Huala will be released because the ordinary crimes for which he is accused in Argentina do not require preventive detention, warned the Río Negro Minister of Security, Betiana Minor.
From the Ministry of the Interior of Chile they confirmed the will of the Government of Gabriel Boric that "he be extradited to serve the corresponding sentence."
The announcement was made the same day that the Senate approved a new extension of the state of emergency in the southern macrozone, the epicenter of the Mapuche conflict in Chile.
Lonco Jones Huala is accused of leading the extremist group Resistencia Ancestral Mapuche, which is blamed for attacks on properties on both sides of the border.
He was first arrested in Argentina in 2017 and extradited to Chile a year later, where he was sentenced to nine years in prison.
The court found him guilty of burning down, along with three other men, the house of the caretakers of a farm in the Chilean town of Río Bueno in 2013. In their ruling, the judges held that they "intimidated the family group, forcing them to leave the home and then with the purpose of setting the property on fire, they sprayed the place with accelerant, setting it on fire, resulting in the house being completely destroyed.”
He was released on January 21, 2022 after filing an amparo appeal with the Temuco Court of Appeals, in southern Chile.
But the following month the Supreme Court revoked the conditional release he had been granted and ordered him re-admitted to prison.
Failing to locate him, the Chilean Justice declared him a fugitive.
Jones Huala has a "blue alert" from Interpol in force, aimed at obtaining more information about the identity of a person, their whereabouts or their criminal activities in relation to a criminal investigation, the Río Negro government reported.
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