This Friday, the Government of Gabriel Boric has demanded that Venezuela extradite two suspected perpetrators of the kidnapping and murder of Ronald Ojeda, a former lieutenant opposed to the Government of Nicolás Maduro and a political refugee in Chile since 2018. The Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, has warned Caracas that “the eyes of the world” will be on their behavior. This is the first reaction of the left-wing Administration after the Chilean Prosecutor's Office pointed out that the murder of Ojeda on March 2, committed in Santiago de Chile, had a political motive and was orchestrated from Venezuela.
Three men kidnapped Ojeda, 32, in the early hours of February 21 from his apartment in the municipality of Independencia, where he lived with his wife and young son. The criminals had their faces covered and were wearing false uniforms of the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI). Everything was recorded on a video of the building. The police found his body 10 days later, buried 1.40 meters deep, in an irregular settlement in the western area of Santiago de Chile. So far there has been only one detainee – a 17-year-old minor – and the Prosecutor's Office has said that two other suspects are in Venezuelan territory.
“Both countries have a current extradition treaty since 1962, and although the current Venezuelan Constitution does not contemplate the extradition of nationals, this treaty has not been abandoned, neither by Venezuela nor by Chile,” Tohá stated. “Chile has every right to demand compliance and to ask that in the case of these criminals, once apprehended, they be allowed to come and face justice in our country for the crime they committed in our land,” he added.
This Thursday's statements by Chilean prosecutor Héctor Barros to the television channel Chilevision on whether the motive for Ojeda's murder was political – “so far I have no other precedent that shows us, that points us in the other direction” – occurs at a time when tension between Santiago and Caracas has been escalating. Hours before, Boric had announced that he would call the Chilean ambassador in Venezuela, the socialist Jaime Gazmuri, for consultation, after the chancellor of the Government of Nicolás Maduro, Yván Gil, declared that the international criminal group Tren de Aragua is “a media fiction international”. Tohá announced that this Friday they will send diplomatic notes on the case and Ambassador Gazmuri will receive instructions from President Boric regarding “additional measures” that will be taken in the bilateral relationship.
Prosecutor Barros, coordinator in Santiago of the Organized Crime and Homicide Team (ECOH), insisted early in the morning that “investigative lines have been discarded.” “So far we have established that this was not a self-kidnapping, that it was not an extortionate kidnapping, this was organized by the Tren de Aragua with a foreign organization and in the context of organized crime,” he told the media. He also explained that a request for international criminal assistance was made to Caracas, to help them with the arrest of the two Venezuelan citizens who are in Venezuela.
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