November 25, 2022, 9:44 PM
November 25, 2022, 9:44 PM
A former security minister and former drug prosecutor was found dead with two shots to the head at his residence in Asunción, the police reported this Friday.
“The body of former minister Javier Ibarra was found in the kitchen of his home. We have no information on previous reports of threats“Said the head of Homicide, Commissioner César Silguero, at a press conference.
“The autopsy confirms that died as a result of two gunshot wounds to the temple“, the police officer added.
The prosecutor in the case, Gerardo Mosquera, did not rule out suicide either. “Suicide cannot be ruled out.. We have no disorder, no traces of violence. Nothing can be ruled out,” she stressed.
ibarra He was Vice Minister of Internal Security of the Ministry of the Interior in the Government of Horacio Cartes (2013-2018).
The Minister of the Interior at the time, Francisco de Vargas, was questioned in 2015 over an audio broadcast by the press in which a Brazilian drug trafficker involved Ibarra in a scheme to corrupt politicians and police officers.
Ibarra said in his defense that his work as an investigator made enemies for him.
In 2016, Ibarra denounced that unknown persons forced their vehicle to take three weapons of war belonging to the Police. He also accused the former drug chief at the time of mounting a campaign to have him removed. After the incident he resigned and returned to the Prosecutor’s Office for a couple more years.
“There is a huge power struggle for control of drug trafficking. Many people must be very worried. In this bid for power, everyone knows where their shoe pinches,” Ibarra said in 2018, in one of his last public statements before leaving the Public Ministry to dedicate himself to the profession of criminal lawyer.
His statements made reference to the murder of a lawyer, an Argentine national, Laura Casuso, defender of Brazilians accused of drug trafficking.
In Paraguay, the murder last May of drug prosecutor Marcelo Pecci on a beach in the Colombian Caribbean while enjoying her honeymoon.
The Police of that country captured the perpetrators of the event and the United States Government announced on November 17 that it is offering a reward of up to $5,000,000 for information on the masterminds of the crime.
