The investigations of the Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci against organized crime and drug trafficking would be the cause of the attack in which he lost his life on the Colombian island of Barú, the destination he had chosen for his honeymoon.
Pecci was shot dead on Tuesday by unknown assailants who came to a private beach in Barú, an event rarely seen in that tourist site and which Paraguay harshly condemned.
When referring to the investigations Regarding the attack, the director of the Colombian police, Jorge Luis Vargas, indicated that they point to the work of the prosecutor, who at 45 years of age had become one of the most important and respected in Paraguayan justice.
“The first great hypothesis we have is that due to his functions, his cases, what was done in large operations, this assassination occurred,” Vargas said at a press conference in the Colombian city of Cartagena de Indias.
“It was an assassination against justice committed by a system of transnational organized crime with high planning and investment of resources to commit this act,” added the official.
He explained that the suspect in murdering the prosecutor is a man approximately 1.74 meters tall, with a dark complexion and a Caribbean accent.
The suspect’s photo was released on Tuesday by the police and in it you can see a man dressed in black and with a hat that partially hides his face, for which the authorities asked for the collaboration of citizens to identify him.
“After the publication of the spoken portrait and the poster with the image of the alleged perpetrator of the act, we have received several calls. There was planning, a system of transnational organized crime”: @DirectorPolicia in @RevistaSemana
– Colombian Police (@PoliciaColombia) May 11, 2022
Tracking from Paraguay
The words of the Colombian police chief ratified the versions anticipated by authorities in Paraguay, who did not rule out a possible link between the attack and Pecci’s professional work.
Paraguay’s attorney general, Sandra Quiñónez, said in an interview Tuesday night with the channel SNT that Pecci’s work was not only “against local organized crime or local drug trafficking but transnational”.
Pecci, according to the head of the Public Ministry, was part of an international network of prosecutors fighting drug trafficking.
In the same vein, the Minister of the Interior, Federico González, who reminded journalists on Wednesday that the official has carried out “very important processes” expressed himself.
The authorities admitted that the investigation seeks to determine if the prosecutor’s movements were being watched since he left Paraguayan territory with his wife, journalist Claudia Aguilera, whom he married on April 30.
“We think that the monitoring could start here,” the commander of the Paraguayan National Police, Gilberto Fleitas, told local media.
The officer said he was “sure” that his Colombian peers would identify the masterminds.
The Colombian authorities are working on intense search tasks that include controls on highways, airports and border crossings, while information has been shared with Interpol and Europol so that they can join the search for suspects.
Government of Paraguay advances proceedings
The Paraguayan ambassador in Bogotá, Sophia López Garelli, told local media that four Paraguayans were interrogated by authorities in Colombia as part of the investigation, although she admitted that the proceedings included citizens of other nationalities.
According to the diplomat, they were two Paraguayan women who traveled to Colombia on the same plane as the prosecutor and two others who were staying at the same hotel.
During this day, the Senate received the Colombian ambassador to Paraguay, Fernando Sierra Ramos, to talk about the investigations and the possibility of new forms of cooperation between the two countries.
Meanwhile, the head of the Interior explained to journalists that the procedures and steps are being taken to carry out the repatriation of Marcelo Pecci’s body “as soon as possible”.