August 19, 2024, 1:27 PM
August 19, 2024, 1:27 PM
A Paraguayan deputy from the ruling party Colorado Party He died on Monday during a shootout with anti-drug police during a raid on his home in the northeast of the country, official sources reported.
“The interveners were repelled with gunfire and returned fire, mortally wounding the parliamentarian” Eulalio Gomes, The police chief indicatedCommissioner Carlos Benitezto the press.
Gomes, 67, was a member of parliament for the ruling conservative Colorado Party.
The operation was aimed at capturing Alexandre Gomes, the politician’s son, who escaped but later turned himself in to authorities, according to the police report.
The search warrant was signed by a judge for the arrest of “people suspected of being part of a money laundering scheme from drug trafficking and criminal association.”
The police chief reported that two searches were carried out on properties belonging to the deputy in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero, 550 km northeast of Asunción, on the dry border with Brazil.
Benitez clarified that the anti-drug police had not planned to arrest the politician, who enjoys parliamentary immunity, and whose mission was to seize documents related to an investigation into connections to drug trafficking in which the deceased, a wealthy rancher in the area, was involved.
In 2015, another pro-government deputy, Magdaleno Silva, was also killed, but at the hands of hitmen in front of his home, in a town 50 km from where Gomes lived.
“There is a growing concern about the links between drug trafficking and politics,” criminologist Juan Martens told AFP.
“There is information about people who are mayors, city councillors in the interior and political leaders who are under suspicion,” he stressed, after pointing especially to the northeastern region of the dry border with Brazil.
