A trial that could put ten indigenous Mapuche people behind bars for up to 40 years each on terrorism charges begins Tuesday in the Chilean Court on Constitutional Rights.

Indigenous leaders are describing the trial – set to take place in the municipality of Victoria – as a set-up.

The ten men are charged with “robbery with intimidation of a terrorist nature, terrorist arson attacks and illegal association with terrorist organisations.”

Two of the accused are minors, Patricio Queipul and Luis Marileo. Police have sought Queipul since he was 11. For his part, Marileo participated in two hunger strikes demanding respect for the rights of the Mapuche children.

Lawyers for both minors requested to start a separate process to review their situation. The move is also to prevent the minors to be tried under Anti-Terrorism Law.

The Mapuche members are being tried for acts that occurred in October 2009. It was after an alleged attack in the Chilean commune of Victoria. The local authorities are asking for the accused Mapuche to serve between 25 to 40 years in prison.

This trial has been criticised by indigenous authorities and by lawyers, because the prosecution’s main evidence against the Mapuche is from a “protected witness.”

This legal manoeuvre, which these groups are challenging, is protected by the anti-terrorism law that emerged during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

The spokesman of the Autonomous Community of Temucuicui, Jorge Hunchullán, complained that ”they are still using a law inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship” to try these cases.

The spokesman also described the trial as ”an assembly oriented to criminalise Mapuche people’s struggle,” adding that they are defending their land and ancestral rights.

The Mapuche community, Paichil Antriao, will be represented by a human rights watch association in the civil court case against Argentine NBA star Emanuel Ginóbili, announced the head of the indigenous group earlier this week.

The Indigenous Peoples Observatory of Human Rights (ODHPI) will represent the Mapuche community in the judicial row about 11-acres of property the basketball player bought back in 2004.

Problems arose because the Mapuche community is claiming ownership of the land the villa is built on, dating back to 1902. The property, located in Villa La Angostura, was purchased for about US$10 million in 2004, but the court case started only three years later. The werken (head of the community) of the Paichil Antriao group, Mario Railaf, accuses Ginóbili of displacing “more than 30 families” that were living on the land by the time of the buyout.

When the community refused to leave the land, the Argentine player filed a lawsuit against its members. According to the weekly newspaper Perfil, “the legal strategy has been that of denying the existence of the community to deny the indigenous people’s rights.” In 2011, the Court of Appeals urged the player’s lawyers to recognise the community as defendant part in the trial. The trial was then suspendend during the summer holidays and recently resumed.

The Mapuche community, along with the director of Indigenous Peoples Observatory of Human Rights (ODHPI), Juan Manuel Salgado, fears that if Ginóbili won the lawsuit, the next step would be eviction from the territory. Mr. Salgado claims that Ginóbili bought the land from Joseph Salamida, a local official appointed by the dictatorship, who in the past had seized various lots of land.

In April 2011, the InterAmerican Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) accepted a petition by the ODHPI and ordered the Argentine government to take “urgent measures” to “guarantee the life and integrity of the Mapuche community.”

Law 26,160, approved by the Congress in 2006, prohibits the eviction of indigenous peoples and orders compulsory land surveys in similar occasions.