Chilean prosecutor Hector Barros assured this Thursday that the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Ronald Ojeda, ex-military and opponent of the government of Nicolás Maduro, It was an organized crime directly from Venezuela.
Ojeda was kidnapped on February 21 when a group of hooded men broke into the building where he lived in the south of Santiago, the Chilean capital, and forcibly removed him from his apartment.
Moments of the kidnapping of Ronald Ojeda Moreno.
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Images broadcast by local television channels showed the moment when the men, who posed as Chilean police officers, They took the man out almost naked, as he was dressed only in his underwear. Ten days later, Ojeda's body was found inside a suitcase buried under cement.
Barros, head of the Team against Organized Crime and Homicide (ECOH) and who is in charge of the case of Ojeda's death, stated that The authorities have already discarded the first hypothesis that held that organized crime and The criminal organization of the Tren de Aragua could be behind the kidnapping and murder of the former military man because the way these groups act is different.
“There is a degree of organization, there is a degree of execution of this crime that we have not seen. The Aragua Train never acted as they did in this case, “They dressed up as police officers and did the job in addition to burying him at 1 meter 40, and cementing the area,” he stated.
Site where the body found in Maipú corresponds to former Venezuelan lieutenant Ronald Ojeda. credit: El Mercurio/Chile
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The prosecutor also assured that other hypotheses were ruled out, such as that Ojeda could be related to illegal activities or that it was a kidnapping for ransom.
“So far we have established that this was not a self-kidnapping, it was not an extortionate kidnapping or that this was organized by the Tren de Aragua with a foreign organization, in the context of organized crime. The specific profile of the victim leads us to conclude that none of the first hypotheses in which the victim had been involved in illicit movements or that the Aragua Train had kidnapped him for the purposes of collecting a ransom, are absolutely ruled out, therefore, the only line we have left is that,” he said.
And he added: “We maintain that this was organized, the kidnapping and subsequent homicide of Mr. Ojeda was requested from Venezuela.”
After the prosecutor's statements became known, the Chilean political parties reacted and called for action against the Venezuelan government. The Republican Party, for example, asked to convene a meeting of the National Security Council to adopt measures “in the face of the serious violation of national sovereignty by the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro.”
This is a transnational crime that was organized in Venezuela (…) I have not said who organized it
“Following the statement by prosecutor Héctor Barros saying that the kidnapping and murder of Ronald Ojeda was organized from Venezuela, if Venezuelan intelligence is accredited in Chile, we are facing a serious fact and it warrants breaking diplomatic relations with the Maduro dictatorship,” he wrote. Senator Francisco Chahuán for his part in his account of X.
The prosecutor assured that they have already requested international criminal assistance from Venezuela to find the capture of two Venezuelan citizens.s that are in that country and that would be related to the murder of Ojeda. Interpol arrest warrants already exist against these people, as reported by the Chilean government in March. In the case, the authorities also charged a 17-year-old minor.
“What I have said is that this is a transnational crime that was organized in Venezuela (…) I have not said who organized it, because that is part of the investigation, and that is what we are working on,” the prosecutor reiterated on Friday.
In March, after learning of the murder, sectors of the Venezuelan opposition pointed to the hypothesis of a covert operation by the secret services of the Maduro government. A theory that the Executive in Caracas rejected.
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