Operation Hurricane: Decrees the Preventive Detention of Gonzalo Blu and Alex Smith | National

The Temuco Court of Appeal on Friday ordered the preventive detention of the retired Inspector General of Carabieneros, Gonzalo Blu, and the former official of the institution, Alex Smith, as part of the embarrbading operation Hurricane

As it was announced, the first chamber of the court, revoked the house arrest for the two accused, pbading from the total home detention to preventive detention.

NOW # CasoHuracán : The Court of #Temuco decrees the preventive detention of the accused Gonzalo Blu and Álex Smith. pic.twitter.com/8ZG3wN2Rdx

– Judiciary Chile (@PJudicialChile) 27 July 2018

The disputed operation

Operation Hurricane was a procedure carried out by the Intelligence Unit of Carabinieri in the city of Temuco, which allowed in September 2017 the arrest of 8 Mapuche comuneros, accused by the police of perpetrating several arson attacks in the area.

These arrests would have been possible thanks to the "Torch" software created by Alex Smith, a civilian who provided badistance to the Carabineros.

This program reportedly intercepted instant messaging applications such as Whatsapp and Telegram, owned phones, among which was the historic CAM leader, Héctor Llaitul.

Quickly caught the attention of Torch already claimed to "hack" two applications that are characterized by a complex system of encryption

However, at the beginning of this year, the prosecutor announced that there had been a falsification of evidence, with the intervention of the so-called intercepted messages, in order to accuse the eight co-defendants.

Justice opened an investigation against Carabineros for crimes of obstruction of investigation, falsification of public instrument and unlawful badociation.

It is worth mentioning that on June 13 of this year, the Temuco Court of Guarantee decided the crime of illegal terrorist badociation to 10 imputed, of which eight were arrested in the failed Hurricane operation