Quito – (AFP)
A former Ecuadorian policeman was arrested in Colombia on Friday on suspicion of killing his wife in a crime that has rocked Ecuador, the Ecuadorian government said.
“The incredible effort of the Ecuadorian and Colombian police and the Colombian armed forces led to the arrest of Germain Caceres in Colombia,” Ecuadorian Interior Minister Juan Zapata tweeted.
Ecuadorian President Guillermo Laso also wrote on Twitter that Germain Caceres, “wanted in the murder of Maria Belén Bernal, has been identified and arrested,” noting that he “will face the Ecuadorian judiciary as soon as he arrives in the country.”
Germain Caceres is a former policeman suspected of killing his wife, lawyer María Belén Bernal, 34, who disappeared on 9/11 after entering an officer training institute on the outskirts of Quito to visit her husband.
His body was found ten days later on a hill near the college.
This case has shaken the population of the small country in the Andes region, where 276 murders of women have been recorded since the beginning of the year, according to a feminist non-governmental organization that monitors violence against women.
The victim’s mother, Elizabeth Otavalo, confirmed that her daughter was the victim of a “state crime” as she was killed in a police facility.
“I’m fighting a monster that is the state,” he said in a recent interview with Agence France-Presse, adding that “the institutions that are supposed to protect our rights don’t help us.”
