Assumption. A Paraguayan lawmaker from the ruling Colorado Party died on Monday during a shootout with anti-drug police during a raid on his residence in the northeast of the country, official sources reported.
“The attackers were repelled with gunfire and they returned fire, mortally wounding the parliamentarian” Eulalio Gomes, said the Chief of Police, Commissioner Carlos Benítez, to 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 said 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.
Benítez clarified that the anti-drug forces had no plans to arrest the politician, who enjoys parliamentary immunity, and that the mission was to seize documents related to an investigation into connections to drug trafficking in which the deceased, a wealthy cattle 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.
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– 2024-08-25 08:01:16
