The violence and torture suffered by the Chilean Luis Toledo, 31, in a kidnapping for five days in Guayaquil, Ecuador, have left him in a delicate state of health. This was announced by the Chilean Foreign Minister, Antonia Urrejola, after her rescue last Sunday by the Special Team for Negotiation and Hostage Rescue in Ecuador. Toledo is a first corporal in the Chilean Navy, but he is on leave of absence for two years. Two of those involved in the kidnapping have been detained, according to Ecuadorian authorities. The hypothesis is that his captors assumed that Toledo had a healthy financial situation, but the investigations continue.
On the night of Tuesday, November 29, Ecuadorian María Verónica Guartatanga arrived at her home in an urbanization 15 kilometers north of Guayaquil. She called her attention that she was not expecting her dog or her husband. She tried to contact Toledo, but her cell phone was turned off. Worried, she unsuccessfully went looking for them in the neighborhood and she ended up calling the police. Around midnight, she received an anonymous message via WhatsApp warning her that her husband had “a serious problem.” The text was accompanied by an image in which the sailor was bound hand and foot, and without a finger on his left hand. The kidnapper asked Guartatanga for a ransom of $100,000, but she replied that she did not have that money. Then, the interlocutor threatened that one of the individuals who accompanied him was going to kill him, according to the woman’s account to the Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office.
The caliber of the threats set off alarms in Quito and Santiago. The Special Police Investigations Brigade (BIPE), the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI), together with Interpol and authorities from both countries worked together on the rescue. In conversations with relatives of Toledo, a native of the southern Chilean region of Biobío, the kidnappers asked them for an advance of the money to “treat him well” and “begin to fix him” with medicines, according to the messages they showed to the local press.
The National Anti-kidnapping and Extortion Investigation Unit of Ecuador (UNASE) managed to georeference the location from where the videos, messages and audios were broadcast. “Due to the level of violence against the victim, UNASE immediately activated its Crisis Committee,” reported the Ecuadorian Ministry of the Interior. The agents found Toledo alive last Sunday in the violent town of Durán, 50 kilometers south of where the kidnapping took place. Colonel Fabary Montalvo, chief of Zone VIII of the Ecuadorian Police, reported that once the kidnappers noticed the presence of the institution of order, they got scared and released the sailor.
In the procedure, they arrested a 30-year-old man with no criminal record and, hours later, another. The Prosecutor’s Office will present charges against both for their possible participation, while the investigations continue in which they assure that there were at least five involved.
Monsalvo clarified that the Ecuadorian National Police did not carry out any monetary transaction with the kidnappers. However, Toledo’s family would have transferred $2,000 to a bank account. The hypothesis being considered at the moment is that the victim “had some kind of approach with an individual who thought he had a high economic position” and assumed that he could benefit from the kidnapping.
Toledo’s mother, Yessenia Cruces, and other relatives of the victim received a report of the ransom from the Chilean investigative police in Concepción. “Thank God my son is fine. They rescued him. And only that. Thank the police here, in Chile, to everyone who was involved,” said the woman who had been asking local media for help for days. Foreign Minister Urrejola assured on Monday that the corporal was subjected to “mistreatment and torture” and that his health is delicate because “there was a lot of violence.” “That was in the press, but the important thing is that he has been released and is alive,” she said. The Minister of Foreign Relations added that she communicated with the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, Juan Carlos Holguín, and that the Ecuadorian authorities are investigating the facts.
Toledo is hospitalized in a Guayaquil hospital. The Chilean moved to Ecuador at the beginning of the year, where he married María Verónica Guartatanga. When the Chilean Navy found out about the kidnapping, he offered to activate their aid protocols and clarified that the corporal has been using special leave, without pay, since January 2022.
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