Héctor Barros: the style of the Chilean prosecutor who investigates the mysterious kidnapping of former Venezuelan military officer Ronald Ojeda

On November 14, 2023, the Organized Crime and Homicide Team (ECOH) debuted in Chile, a unit promoted by the Government of President Gabriel Boric, and integrated by the Public Ministry, in response to the security crisis.

At the head, as coordinator in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, was appointed Héctor Barros, 55 years old, an experienced prosecutor with more than 20 years of career who in the mid-2000s solved a series of kidnappings with extortion, at that time unprecedented crimes, committed among Chilean criminals, and which also dismantled the Los Cara de Jarro, Los Cara de Pelota and Los Gaete drug clans.

When the brand new group was launching, Barros explained in an interview the task that lay ahead: “What we want to do now is not just a homicide or a kidnapping in particular, but to reveal the criminal organization behind it.”

More than three months have passed since then.

And also at least half a dozen kidnappings in Santiago, most of them for extortion and perpetrated by transnational gangs.

In January, for example, Barros' team found two torture houses, in the municipality of Maipú, where members of the Aragua Train were holding Colombian citizens captive.

However, at dawn on Wednesday the 21st, an alert reached the ECOH that, at first glance, could have been one more case of those that have occurred since 2022, most of which involved foreign victims, but which has become a puzzle: the kidnapping. of former Venezuelan military officer Ronald Leandro Ojeda Moreno, 32, who was taken from his apartment on the 14th floor of the building where he lived, in the Independencia commune in Santiago, at 3:15 in the morning.

According to the videos from the concierge camera, four subjects with their faces covered and wearing false uniforms of the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI) took him away, barefoot, tied up and only wearing his underwear.

In the parking lot you can see a gray car with a beacon and, seven days after the incident, there is no news of its whereabouts.

Officially, the Boric Government, through the Undersecretary of the Interior Manuel Monsalve, has only spoken twice about Ojeda's case, on Wednesday and Thursday of last week.

First to say that an alert was issued to Interpol and the borders were reinforced and then to report that he filed a complaint.

Due to its secrecy, the Executive has received pressure from the opposition, which asks for answers and information, in addition to summoning the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá.

Just this Tuesday Tohá told

Tele13 Radio

that “the fact that nothing is known does not mean that nothing happens.”

And she highlighted that “there is progress” that she considers “significant.”

But, she added: “I don't think we should qualify them too much.

"We have to let the prosecutor's office work."

And she stressed that the investigation has been declared secret.

@ECOH_FiscaliaRM investigation into reports of kidnapping of a Venezuelan citizen @FiscaliadeChile pic.twitter.com/AZ0XoU699i

— ECOH_Fiscalia_RM (@ECOH_FiscaliaRM) February 22, 2024

Ojeda arrived in Chile in 2018 and, according to his mother Omaira Moreno in a public statement via video on Monday, he is a political asylum seeker.

Due to his profile, he is an opponent of Nicolás Maduro and expelled from his country's Army.

His disappearance has given rise to a series of hypotheses, none of which have been ruled out or confirmed by the Chilean authorities.

In fact, a week after the disappearance, prosecutor Barros has not referred to the case.

But researchers are investigating at least four theories: possible international intervention;

an eventual kidnapping for ransom (despite the lack of communication between the captors), a kidnapping linked to a gang or even self-kidnapping.

The first person to point out an operation orchestrated by the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) of Venezuela was the former Venezuelan commissioner Iván Simonovis, now an opposition member, through his social network account X. On Wednesday the 21st, he was the first to publish his name.

From the Cara de Jarro to the Aragua Train

Until now, Ojeda's case has been different from the kidnappings investigated by the ECOH coordinated by Barros, who is also the regional prosecutor of the southern metropolitan area of ​​Santiago, a sector where, even before the emergence of the new transnational crime , concentrated the most violent crimes in the city.

Unlike other kidnappings, in which in most situations the victims are forcibly put into a vehicle on the street and then a ransom is requested or there is communication from the captors, in the case of the Venezuelan citizen there has been no , in seven days, no contact.

For this reason, he has been classified as highly complex.

Extortionate kidnappings experienced an increase in Santiago two years ago: in 2021 there were 26;

in 2022, 46 and in 2023, 56, according to the PDI.

Among those registered, it is the first time that the captors are dressed as police officers.

Although it is not the first time that criminal gangs dress up as detectives or police officers, but to commit assaults.

Barros entered the Public Ministry in 2001, first in La Serena, a city in the north-central area of ​​Chile.

He arrived at the South Metropolitan Prosecutor's Office in 2004. He first specialized in robberies.

Later he led the first prosecutor's office specialized in anti-narcotics and organized crime that was promoted in Chile.

At that time, the term organized crime was considered a rarity in the South American country, which is why today they are pointed out as pioneers in creating a team with that profile.

It was precisely in that prosecutor's office where, between 2005 and 2006, a series of extortionate kidnappings that were unprecedented in Chile at that time were investigated.

After Barros' investigation he cleared up that they were perpetrated between groups of criminals.

This is how Danilo Mancilla's gang fell, sentenced in 2008 to 22 years in prison.

After this case, for more than a decade this type of crime practically disappeared, but it was a warning of what could come in the future.

Therefore, at that time, Hector Barros traveled to training in Honduras and El Salvador, and also attended a course on kidnappings and hostage negotiation in 2005 at the FBI.

Barros and his team also led the investigations of the then three main trafficking clans in the southern area of ​​Santiago: Los Cara de Jarro, whose profits the prosecutor calculated in 2012 as “close to a million dollars”;

Los Cara de Pelota and Los Gaete.

At that time, 280 million Chilean pesos in cash (about $285,000) were seized from the latter organization hidden in sacks of potatoes in the house of his partner.

One of the last cases solved by Barros was in November 2023. It involved the kidnapping, in April and for four days, of the leader of a Venezuelan motorcycle gang that stole mobile phones in the eastern area of ​​Santiago.

For his release, 120,000 dollars were paid and delivered, as established by the Public Ministry, in Venezuela.

The way in which the payment was made is still being investigated.

Kidnappings with this

modus operandi,

in which small merchants who have no relationship with organized crime gangs have also been victims, are those that have led the prosecutor's investigations in the last two years.

That is why the case of former lieutenant Ojeda is considered unusual until now.

Subscribe here

to the EL PAÍS Chile newsletter and receive all the key information on current events in the country.