Chilean mail bombs case

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Chilean mail bombs case

On September 27, 2001, two letter bombs arrived in Santiago, Chile. One was sent to the U.S. Embassy and was destroyed in a controlled explosion. The other went to the office of lawyer Luis Hermosilla. The bombs contained explosives and wires.

The attacks were linked to Humberto López Candia, an informant for a security group called La Oficina, and Lenin Guardia Basso, a sociologist and intelligence analyst. Guardia had helped in the transition to democracy crackdown on crime and drug trafficking. Guardia and López later claimed the attacks were part of propaganda actions, and Guardia gave officials a list of people supposedly targeted by a reassembled group called FPMR (the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez).

Guardia was paid by authorities for false information, and López contacted the media to talk about the events. The two men met with police and discussed the case, and weapons similar to those used in the bombs were found at Guardia’s home.

In court, López confessed to the crimes and said he did them for fame. Guardia claimed innocence and said López had deceived him. In 2002 López wrote a repentance letter admitting he had involved Guardia fraudulently.

The court ruled that both men had tried to profit from the fear after the September 11 attacks by inventing terrorism plots to sell security services. Other alleged plots, like poisoned chocolates or a poisoned yogurt, were mentioned but later dropped.

Sentencing followed: 10 years and 300 days in prison for both López and Guardia for terrorist crimes, with Guardia receiving an extra 61 days for weapon violations. The sentence was upheld on appeal in 2002. Guardia was moved between prisons, including Punta Peuco and a High Security Prison in Santiago, and he saw some sentence reductions for good conduct, with Sunday release beginning in 2007.

In 2020–2021, the defendants asked to unarchive Guardia’s judicial file. A 2021 court decision limited access to some documents, and Guardia appealed to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.