On February 4th, 2015, the court in Santiago issued the judgment against the compañera Tamara Sol Farías Vergara, who has been held for a little over a year in pretrial detention, accused of shooting a security guard in a branch of BancoEstado in the commune of Estación Central in the morning of January 21st, 2014.
The court acknowledged the mitigating factor of her previous irreproachable conduct, but denied that Tamara Sol substantially collaborated in clarifying the facts, considering that neither her statement given to the prosecution at the stage of the investigation with which she admitted to the facts, nor her consent to the realisation of several expert reports contributed anything, since the evidence was already available to the authorities from the moment of her arrest. In addition, the defense’s proposed mitigating circumstance of diminished capacity, based on expert testimonies by psychologists, was dismissed.
In fact, the presiding judge adopted the prosecution’s argument that spoke of a premeditated action, alleging that this has been demonstrated by the cry “revenge for Sebastián” attributed to Tamara Sol at the time of opening fire on the guard, and emphasizing the fact she chose not to make any declaration during the trial. Thus, while the defense sought recognition of two mitigating circumstances in order to request a sentence of 3 to 5 years and the application of the alternative sentence of release under intensive supervision instead of actual imprisonment, this objective was not reached.
In particular, Tamara Sol Farías Vergara was convicted of aggravated attempted homicide and sentenced to 7 years in prison, perpetual absolute disqualification from holding any public duty and office and from practicing political rights, and absolute disqualification from maintaining or obtaining any professional license for the duration of the prison sentence. She was also convicted of theft regarding the gun of the security guard and sentenced to 61 days in prison and a fine of almost 215,000 Chilean pesos (300 euros). Finally, she was ordered to pay the costs of the case and to give her DNA samples that will be included in the Registry of the Convicted.
This synopsis was originally written in Spanish, based on the official court ruling. In the video below you can see the reaction of her close ones once the sentence was pronounced: