Senator Raúl Lozano (Open Town Council) left Parliament this Wednesday with a question: to know if there is an answer about the motivation that his colleague Charles Carrera might have had to, on the one hand, help from his position in the Ministry of the Interior to a young man who was paraplegic due to a stray bullet in 2012 and, on the other, “tapujear” what happened that night in the neighboring house of a police deputy commissioner suspected of having been the place of origin of the shot.
What the lobbying senator said he did not understand is whether Carrera incurred in all the irregularities that were reported to him to “protect” some police officer. “Some reason had to have had, because it does not seem normal behavior”, he reflected. Far from being personal, Lozano’s doubts – expressed in the Safety and Coexistence Commission after receiving a report from the Ministry of the Interior on the subject – are common to other members of the coalition.
Beyond the alleged irregularities that the Frente Amplio senator committed to provide “humanitarian aid” –as he himself defined it– to the victim of the shot through admission to the Police Hospital –despite being a civilian– and a subsidy in tickets for diet, the main question is why he did it.
And also about what happened in 2012 at the house of the deputy police commissioner of La Paloma, from where, according to the victim, the bullet left him in a wheelchair for life. To clarify it, there is a menu of various options on the table, which will begin to be analyzed this Monday by the National Party bench.
As more viable alternatives, the whites consider submitting Carrera to a political trial, or go for the formation of a parliamentary investigative commission. So he told The Observer Senator Jorge Gandini, although he clarified that the definition will be taken by the entire government coalition.
“The facts are very serious”said Gandini on Wednesday, in the presence of Minister Luis Alberto Heber in the parliamentary commission. The alleged irregularities denounced by the Ministry of the Interior include the internment of the victim in the Police Hospital for three and a half years outside the regulations, as well as the payment of food tickets using an item from the ministry that was intended for baskets of end of year. Heber estimated in $260 thousand the damage to the State for this concept, and He announced that he will go against the senator’s estate to recover that money.
Among other benefits, the minister reported a “striking” eye operation to the victim in that hospital. Undersecretary Guillermo Maciel pointed out that the victim received an intervention in each eye, in October and December 2013. “Both totally unrelated to the episode of his gunshot wound,” Maciel remarked. The hospital also provided him with ankle splints and an air cushion.
The tip of the iceberg
Gandini listed other facts that remain “in the dark”: for example, where the bullet came from and who fired it. Also the responsibility for the poorly done skills and for the fact that Carrera and other authorities at the time did not denounce this fact. “The most important presumption, which is the cover-up, is not reported, and that is another crime,” the senator stated. There Gandini coincided with Lozano’s reflection. “No one understands why they got here if there was no intention to cover up something that we don’t know and that happened that night. If it wasn’t like that, no one could understand it.”commented.
“With total objectivity, this is the tip of the iceberg,” he pointed out to The Observer the nationalist senator Graciela Bianchi. “As important as what Carrera did is knowing what they wanted to cover up,” he claimed. Beyond clarifying that he is not against the expression of “solidarity” towards the affected man, Bianchi argued that in order to channel this help, ASSE and the Ministry of Social Development should have been used.
“Something wanted to cover up, we want to know what happened”, Bianchi insisted, adding that all parliamentary options are on the table. “Obviously, we’re going to do something.”
In Cabildo Abierto, Guillermo Domenech agreed that the most serious fact is that the shot that wounded Hernández could come from a farm owned by the Ministry of the Interior, where officials were staying. “It has been said that people with police and criminal records attended that meeting, even those linked to drug trafficking,” the senator noted. “It gives us the impression that it corresponds that everything is very clear.”
“Were we meant to cover this up?”
In turn, the ruling party lamented the decision of the Broad Front of deliberately absent from the session Heber attended to report the case. For Gandini, it was a “serious and unpleasant” fact from the institutional point of view. “Charles Carrera missed the opportunity to explain, clarify and defend himself. No one from his party was there to defend him either, ” said.
The nationalist also considered an “offense” the opposition’s statement that all this constitutes a “political circus”, if one takes into account that these are facts that “compromise the conduct and investiture” of a senator of the Republic.
Gandini, in turn, ruled out any type of political intent in the actions against Carrera, as denounced by the Broad Front. The senator recalled that Hernández and his brother “declared to have been active militants of the MPP”, the sector to which the denounced senator belongs. He also pointed out that Heber found out about the case through the mayor of La Paloma, another member of that political group.
“It would have been interesting to hear the position of the party that had government responsibility when the events occurred,” pointed out the senator and leader of Cabildo Abierto, Guido Manini Ríos.
“Was I meant to hide this?” Minister Heber asked for his part on Wednesday before the Security and Coexistence Commission, as an argument to also rule out political intent behind the complaint against Carrera. “It was intended that I, since I am in a situation of confrontation over other matters and over other decisions in other ministries, would send it to file because of how it was going to be taken, without adhering to the law and the law?”
Heber remarked that the ministry simply complied with what was recommended by its legal division, which concluded that the senator’s actions included acts of criminal appearance.
“It is very clear that I had to process it, whether it was Mr. Carrera or any senator or deputy,” Heber insisted, for whom otherwise it would have meant committing a crime of concealment.
The victim, Víctor Hernández, affirms that that day in the deputy commissioner’s house, located in front of his, there was a birthday party, from where gunshots were heard moments before he was injured. The man had to be assisted by a mobile emergency, which arrived half an hour later and never received help from the policemen who were at the party or from those who remained on duty at the police station, meters from the scene. In addition, a 22-caliber rifle, the same as the bullet that wounded Hernández, disappeared without a trace at the police headquarters in that town.
