The prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, together with his wife Claudia Aguilera.
Just 39 days after the murder of Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, shot dead on a beach in Cartagena while enjoying his honeymoon, the Colombian judge sentenced the five responsible for the crime to 23 and a half years in prisonfour of whom pleaded guilty in a trial that ended Friday night.
The detainees accepted the charges and apologized to the official’s family, Paraguay and their own country. Of the five captured, four pleaded guilty to the offenses of “aggravated murder.”; and the trafficking, manufacturing or transport of firearms, “the prosecutor said in a statement.
Pecci, 45, prosecutor specializing in drug trafficking and money laundering, was shot on May 10 on a beach on the island of Barú, near Cartagena, while spending his honeymoon with his wife, the journalist Claudia Aguilera. The attack was carried out by armed men who arrived on a jet ski.
Wendre Still Scott Carrillo will serve the sentence for the crime, who was the one who shot; Eiverson Adrián Arrieta Zabaleta, head of logistics; and Marisol Londoño Bedoya and her son Cristian Camilo, responsible for following in the couple’s footsteps.
Marcelo Pecci was investigating organized crime cases in Paraugay. Photo: AFP.
Scott Carrillo is Venezuelan and the others are Colombians. The fifth inmate, Francisco Luis Correa Galeano, considered the perpetrator of the crime, pleaded not guilty, according to the Colombian newspaper’s website. Time.
The authorities They haven’t identified the masterminds of the murderfor which the attackers received approximately $ 530,000.
The prosecution reconstructed the history of the murder from security camera videos that were shared with the press. In them Pecci and his wife sunbathe on deck chairs as the gunmen arrive on the spot. After a cut in the sequence, the attackers flee.
Yesterday, at the hearing for the acceptance of the accusations, a brother of the prosecutor, Francisco Pecci, had asked for the maximum penalty for the killers and in advance that the family will not ask for financial compensation for the crime.
The inmates they should have received a sentence of 47 years in prison, but received a discount for confessing the facts and cooperating with the investigation. During their speech they apologized to Paraguay, Colombia and the prosecutor’s family with very similar terms, as well as promising that they would never again commit an act of these characteristics.
Claudia Aguilera and the prosecutor Marcelo Pecci.
The five defendants they had been captured on June 3 in a joint operation of the Colombian National Police and the Colombian Attorney General’s Office, with the collaboration of the Paraguayan authorities, according to the then Colombian President Iván Duque.
The Attorney General, Francisco Barbosa, said that the arrest would take place “through two search and search procedures, carried out between the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the National Police”.
In recent weeks, the director of the police, Jorge Luis Vargas, had slipped two hypotheses on who would have given the order to kill Pecci, which point to delicate dossiers in which the anti-mafia prosecutor advanced. However, those connections it could not be proven at trial.
How was the murder of the Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci
Pecci, a well-known anti-Mafia prosecutor of ParaguayHe was shot dead on May 10 on a beach in Barú, near Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, where he traveled on his honeymoon with his wife, Paraguayan journalist Claudia Aguilera.
Aguilera cries beside the body of her husband, the Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, on the beaches of Barú.
He was a specialized prosecutor against organized crime and with experience in anti-unity drug trafficking, money laundering and terrorist financing of the Public Prosecutor of Paraguay.
In his country he had participated in a number of high-profile causes, such as the Operation “Extreme”, who investigated a colossal drug trafficking and money laundering scheme in the neighboring country, or a quadruple homicide in which one of the victims was the daughter of a provincial governor.
He had recently been tasked with other investigations related to organized crime, such as a double strike at a music festival held this year, the disappearance of weapons from a government escortor the extradition of a Lebanese-Brazilian citizen accused of money laundering from drug trafficking.
He married the Paraguayan journalist Claudia Aguilera on April 30.
On May 10, the prosecutor was attacked by two people who approached the beach where the couple was on a jet ski. They opened fire from the water and fled. There were three hits.
The official was transferred to a health center, but he arrived dead. His wife, meanwhile, was not injured.
LG
Source: Clarin
