The murder of Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci on Tuesday on a Colombian beach, where he was celebrating his honeymoon with his pregnant wife Claudia Aguilera, has caused outrage in the two South American countries, which blame transnational organized crime.
Pecci was shot dead by unknown assailants who arrived on a jet ski to the private beach of Barú, near Cartagena, a fact rarely seen in that tourist site in the Colombian Caribbean.
Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci and his wife, journalist Claudia Aguilera in photos published by her on her Instagram account.Instagram @aguileraclaudi
Referring to the investigations into the attack, the director of the Colombian Police, General Jorge Luis Vargas, indicated that they
point to the work of the prosecutor
, who at 45 years had become one of the most important and respected in Paraguayan justice. .
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"The first great hypothesis we have is that due to their functions, their cases, what they did 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 general.
He explained that the suspect in murdering the prosecutor is a man approximately 1.74 meters tall, with light brown skin and a Caribbean accent.
The spoken portrait of the suspect was released Tuesday by Colombian authorities.
In it, a man dressed in black and with a hat that partially hides his face is seen, for which the authorities
asked for the collaboration of citizens to identify him.
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.
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Paraguay's attorney general, Sandra Quiñónez, stated in an interview Tuesday night with the SNT channel 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.
The Minister of the Interior, Federico González, spoke along the same lines, reminding journalists on Wednesday that the official has carried out "very important processes."
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This spring, one of Pecci's anti-narcotics operations in Paraguay sparked a scandal that prompted several politicians to resign and highlighted the country's role in international cocaine trafficking and money laundering.
The drug was trafficked from Bolivia on clandestine flights and then transported to Uruguay and Argentina by truck, from where it was shipped to Europe.
The authorities admitted that the investigation into his murder seeks to determine if the prosecutor's movements were being watched since he left Paraguayan territory with his wife, the journalist Claudia Aguilera, whom he married on April 30.
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"We think that the follow-up 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.
Colombian authorities did not say whether they believed Aguilera's social media accounts were being monitored.
Hours before the attack, she shared a photo of the two of them on the beach revealing their location:
"The last sunset in Barú, but we will have millions more together,"
she wrote on Instagram.
In a more recent post, she reported that they were expecting a baby.
The "intense" search efforts for the attackers have included checks on roads, airports and border crossings, while information has been shared with Interpol and Europol so that they can join the search for suspects.
The Paraguayan ambassador in Bogotá, Sophia López Garelli, told local media that four Paraguayans were interrogated by the 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.
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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 "as soon as possible" the repatriation of the prosecutor's body.
With information from
EFE
.