Paraguay anti-drug prosecutor shot dead on honeymoon in Colombia
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Loading... - Kathy Grant
- 11 May 2022
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Paraguayan anti-drug prosecutor Marcelo Pecci has been shot dead while honeymooning on a Colombian Caribbean island by men who fled by sea, police and his widow said.
Paraguay’s president denounced the crime as a “cowardly murder” and a fellow prosecutor said the modus operandi was reminiscent of “the [drug] mafia”.
Pecci, 45, was felled by two shots on Tuesday while relaxing on a beach on the tourist island of Baru, according to his wife, Paraguayan journalist Claudia Aguilera, whom he married on April 30 in the nearby city of Cartagena.
“Two men attacked Marcelo. They came in a small boat, or on a jet ski, the truth is I did not see well,” she told the El Tiempo newspaper.
One of the assailants got out and “without a word he shot Marcelo twice, one [bullet] hit him in the face and another in the back”, Aguilera said.
She said her husband of less than two weeks had not received any threats.
The Decameron hotel, where the couple was staying, said in a statement that “assassins arrived on the beach … and attacked and murdered one of our guests”.
The motive for the killing was not immediately known, but Paraguayan prosecutor Augusto Salas, a colleague of Pecci, said the modus operandi was “typical of the [drug] mafia, so that is what I will think until the contrary is proven”.
Colombian police chief Jorge Luis Vargas said five homicide investigators have been dispatched to Baru, and will receive backing from Paraguayan and US experts.
“There is information being collected … that will help us identify those responsible,” Vargas said.
Colombian President Ivan Duque “denounced” the killing on Twitter. Duque said he had offered condolences to his Paraguayan counterpart Mario Abdo Benitez and promised “cooperation to find those responsible”.
For his part, Benitez said on Twitter: “The entire Paraguayan nation mourns the cowardly murder of prosecutor Marcelo Pecci in Colombia. Read More…
