The government of Gabriel Boric announced on Thursday that it would file a lawsuit over the kidnapping of former Venezuelan military officer Ronald Leandro Ojeda Moreno, 32, on Chilean territory. The State Ministry is conducting a secret investigation to find out the whereabouts of Ojeda, an opponent of Nicolás Maduro's regime, who was apparently kidnapped early Wednesday morning by four masked people in his apartment in the municipality of Independencia, in the northern part of Santiago. According to the first versions, the four people pretended to be officers of the Investigative Police (PDI). Amid the series of hypotheses circulating, including an alleged Venezuelan counterintelligence operation, the Undersecretary of the Interior, Manuel Monsalve, reiterated this afternoon that none of them has been ruled out.
“It always seems to us that the complaint lodged by the government with the Ministry of Interior is a very important decision,” explained Monsalve. “Firstly, to give a political signal that the government is interested in ensuring that these cases do not go unpunished and are therefore solved. But also because the government is involved in the effort to solve these types of crimes.”
Chilean Ambassador to Venezuela Jaime Gazmuri holds a conversation with the Vice Minister for the Americas of the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry. Since this is a “very serious event,” according to government spokeswoman Camila Vallejo, contacts with Caracas were maintained at all levels: government, police and the relevant public prosecutor’s offices. As a result of the case, the Chilean executive branch requested an international alert from Interpol on Wednesday in addition to protecting the country's land, sea and air borders.
President Gabriel Boric is on vacation but attended a meeting electronically with members of his cabinet about the deployment. “Obviously the president sees this as a priority,” said Monsalve, who attended the meeting with Chancellor Alberto Van Klaveren and Interior Minister Carolina Tohá. Government spokeswoman Camila Vallejo added that the relevant institutions have held several discussions to clarify and cooperate with the investigation process.
This morning there were a series of meetings in La Moneda to follow up on Ojeda's abduction. Minister of Justice Luis Cordero and Undersecretary Monsalve met with Prosecutor Íngel Valencia and Prosecutor Héctor Barros, who coordinates the Team Against Organized Crime and Homicide (ECOH); Tohá and Monsalve also met with senior PDI officials. “In investigations of this type, it is very important to coordinate with the Ministry of State, which leads the investigation and thus carries out the procedure to solve the possible crime,” Monsalve noted this afternoon.
Ojeda is one of the 33 Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) soldiers expelled and demoted on January 24. The Defense Ministry of Nicolás Maduro's government published the list in which the anti-Chavista activist appeared. Caracas explained that the military was sanctioned for alleged “involvement in conspiracies” such as planning “criminal and terrorist” actions to attack the government system, authorities and institutions of the state, and even considered assassinating the president in a statement of defense. The alleged actions in Venezuela constitute “betrayal of the country.”
According to his statement collected on Twitter in 2017 (now “The 'generals and politicians' are clowns without morals, tyrants in service,” he wrote in reference to Maduro and the members of his cabinet. The Chilean government has not confirmed whether Ojeda the category of political refugee, as it concerns information that cannot be published by law.
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