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A Paraguayan public prosecutor who led a string of high-profile circumstances towards organised crime and drug trafficking has been shot lifeless as he honeymooned on a Colombian seashore.
Marcelo Pecci married Claudia Aguilera, a well known journalist, on 30 April they usually had been spending their honeymoon at a lodge on the Barú peninsula on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.
The 2 attackers arrived on the lodge’s non-public seashore by jetski, in keeping with Aguilera, who was not harm within the assault. Considered one of them approached and “with out saying a phrase shot Marcelo twice, as soon as within the face and as soon as within the again”, she mentioned.
Hours earlier than the assault, Aguilera had posted the information of her being pregnant on social media. “The ultimate sundown in Barú, however we’ll have hundreds of thousands extra collectively,” she wrote.
The killing brought on shock and consternation in Paraguay – which has seen a surge in contract killings linked to the rising energy of organised crime – and in Colombia, the place many anxious it presaged a return to the darkest moments of the nation’s historical past, when drug lords corresponding to Pablo Escobar might order brazen murders of public officers.
Colombian police supplied a reward of 2bn pesos (£400,000) for data resulting in the seize of the attackers. Grainy CCTV photos and an artist’s impression shared by police confirmed one of many suspects carrying a black long-sleeved T-shirt, black shorts and a panama hat.
Police mentioned footage from the lodge revealed that the gunmen had surveyed the lodge earlier than finishing up the killing.
Marta Lucía Ramírez, Colombia’s vice-president and international minister, tweeted her “absolute condemnation and repudiation” of the homicide, including that Colombian police had been working carefully with Paraguay’s lawyer basic.
Paraguay’s president, Mario Abdo Benítez, additionally condemned the “cowardly” homicide, saying the “total Paraguayan nation is in mourning” and that Paraguay would “step up our dedication to combat towards organised crime”.
Pecci, 45, had labored on a number of current high-profile circumstances of contract killings in Paraguay. He notably led an investigation into the taking pictures of a drug trafficker, Marcos Rojas Mora, in a crowd of 20,000 folks at a music pageant within the city of San Bernardino in January. A bystander, Cristina “Vita” Aranda, a well known social media influencer, was additionally killed in that assault.
Paraguay has seen a pointy improve within the variety of paid killings because it turns into extra essential on drug-smuggling routes, and as organised crime teams corresponding to Brazil’s First Capital Command and Purple Command gangs broaden their affect.
Along with being the area’s largest marijuana producer, Paraguay is now the primary route for Bolivian cocaine being moved and processed on the best way to Europe.
Pecci was additionally on the coronary heart of a collection of operations towards drug trafficking teams that led to the confiscation of huge quantities of cocaine and marijuana. Most lately he shaped a part of an ongoing operation towards a big drug-smuggling community transferring cocaine by way of Paraguay in the direction of European ports.
Zully Rolón, the top of Paraguay’s anti-drug secretariat, described the operation – know as “At All Prices Paraguay” – as the largest operation towards drug cash laundering within the nation’s historical past.
In addition to resulting in quite a few arrests and the confiscation of planes and splendid yachts, the operation has highlighted the sturdy hyperlinks between organised crime and high-profile politicians.
Regardless of Pecci’s high-profile work, Aguilera mentioned he had not obtained any dying threats. Nevertheless, a pal of Pecci’s, Sebastián Acha, a former congressman, was reported as saying a black SUV had tried to intercept the general public prosector’s automobile on the day of his wedding ceremony in Asunción, Paraguay’s capital.
Public prosecutor Belinda Bobadilla, the vice-president of the Paraguayan Public Prosecutors Affiliation, informed the Guardian that Pecci’s homicide had despatched deep shockwaves by way of the nation and its establishments.
“We’ve made a dedication as an establishment – as Marcelo’s long-time colleagues – to come back out of this case even stronger in honour of the bravery and braveness he at all times displayed.”
Bobadilla mentioned that Pecci’s homicide was “a transparent show that organised crime teams, drug traffickers, are taking reprisals towards brokers who examine one of these crime”.
“The very fact this occurred [in Colombia] is sending a message throughout all of South America that individuals who run investigations with integrity can endure the identical destiny,”she mentioned.
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