Ballistic and criminological experts in the trial of several elite officers for the murder of Rafael Nahuel refuted two of the accused’s key claims: that they were involved in a shootout with members of the Mapuche community and that they fired rubber bullets before using live rounds. The officers are part of an elite naval police squad known as “Albatros.” 

Officers shot and killed Nahuel, 22, while evicting him from his home in Villa Mascardi, Río Negro province, on November 25, 2017. Nahuel Huapi National Park had accused his community of illegally seizing the disputed land where he was living, and a judge had ordered the eviction on November 23 of that year. Mapuche peoples have laid claim to their ancestral land for centuries, and have more recently suffered repression and persecution from security forces.

The prefects — Sergio Cavia, Francisco Javier Pintos, Juan Ramón Obregón, Carlos Valentín Sosa, and Sergio García — are facing charges of “homicide aggravated by excessive self-defense.”

On August 15, Pintos and Sosa testified that members of Nahuel’s own community shot and killed him. According to the case files, the prefects issued a warning to the Mapuche members in Villa Mascardi before throwing a sound bomb to make them disperse; the Mapuches then allegedly threw rocks at the officers, prompting them to fire on them with rubber bullets and later live rounds.

After conducting a court-ordered inspection on site 12 days after Nahuel’s death, however, the ballistic expert, Roberto Nigris, the criminological expert, Karina Uribe, and the plaintiff’s expert, Silvia Bufalini, all concluded that no shooting had taken place between the two groups. Instead, they contend that Albatros members chased the Mapuches across a mountain.

The inspection, which involved members of the Federal Police along with officers of the court, aimed to locate traces of ammunition in the area, attorney Mariano Przybylski told the Herald. Przybylski is representing the Human Rights Secretariat as a plaintiff in the case.

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Officials discovered rubber bullet casings approximately 800 meters up the mountain.

“When those were analyzed, it was concluded that they didn’t belong to the naval police,” Przybylski said. “They were from the Federal Police, who had been there on November 23.”

During the inspection, the experts also found 31 spent 9-millimeter lead bullet cartridges that matched the ammunition the navy police use. They were scattered over a 100-meter area.

“The Federal Police shot non-lethal ammunition, contrary to the claims of the naval police,” the lawyer added.

From the position of the cartridges, the three experts agreed that the officers had been advancing up the mountain as they fired.

Przybylski represents one of the three plaintiffs in the case, the other two being Nahuel’s family and Bariloche’s Permanent Assembly for Human Rights (APDH, by its Spanish acronym).

While the plaintiffs say there was a chase, the prefects maintain that Mapuche community members ambushed them, leading to a shootout. “This does not match the experts’ testimonies,” Przybylski said.

The experts also denied finding any rubber bullet casings from the navy police’s guns.