POLITICS-PARAGUAY: VP’s Alleged Assassins Flee Argentinean Prison

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 19 2000 (IPS) - Argentina’s President Fernando de la Rúa said Monday he was deeply angered by the escape of three inmates from a prison in the capital, two who face extradition to Paraguay as suspects in the 1999 assassination of vice-president Luis María Argaña.

De la Rúa emphasised that it is a “very serious” incident. The prisoners escaped late Sunday from a Federal Police detention centre in downtown Buenos Areas, a prison that had not suffered one escape in its 112-year history.

Three police have been held incommunicado since Sunday, until they explain to a judge the events leading up to the escape of the three inmates in which not even one weapon was fired. The detainees must also clear up other irregularities involving the conditions in which the prisoners are held.

The Paraguayan fugitives Luis Alberto Rojas and Fidencio Vega Barrios left the prison through one of the main doors without anyone stopping them. The had beaten other inmates – two being former police agents involved in an anti-Semite bomb attack – and overpowering two guards, one who was unarmed.

The prisoners charged with the assassination of Argaña fled with another inmate, Agustin Cabrera, who was being held for armed robbery. He had been transferred to the prison just one week ago, as he was to testify in a case involving the prison system’s complicity in his previous escape from a different penal complex.

Federal Police chief Rubén Santos said the incident was “deplorable” and “disgraceful,” and admitted the negligence of those entrusted with guarding the prisoners, promising to turn things around with the immediate arrest of the fugitives.

Santos commented that, just as the police were able to conduct the intelligence operations that led to the February arrest in Argentina of the two suspects, they will also be able to recapture them.

“I am not going to say we have them surrounded, but we are closing in. We must have patience,” he told a press conference.

“We need a bit of time, but we are sure that they are in the country and that we are going to capture them,” Santos affirmed. He also reported that operations had already been carried out in several locations in Argentina’s interior.

The wife of one of the fugitives, Lilian Pérez de Rojas, said in Asunción that she fears for her husband’s life. “They tell me here in my country that the ones who aided in his escape are going to kill him because it is one way of ‘burning the files’,” she said. “I hope he is still alive.”

Roberto Galmarin, meanwhile, the superintendent of metropolitan safety and entrusted with security at the police central, admitted before the judge investigating the escape that there was negligence, but no bribery, as government and legal officials apparently suspect.

The fugitive’s victims in their escape included two former police agents arrested for participating in the 1994 car bomb attack against the Israeli-Argentinean Mutual Association that killed 86 people. One of the former policemen, Diego Barreda, was severely beaten and was subsequently hospitalised.

Barreda reportedly told his wife that he tried to prevent the escape and defend a female guard who had been taken hostage, threatened with a knife held to her throat.

Paraguayan authorities, meanwhile, expressed their confidence in the investigations backed by the Argentinean government, but not in the actions of the police in Buenos Aires. One of the murdered vice-president’s children, Félix Argaña, said he had no doubt that police were involved in the prison escape.

The crisis unleashed in Paraguay by the assassination of Argaña in March 1999 immediately affected Argentina. The former coup- leading general Lino Oviedo, suspected of being the intellectual author behind the killing, was granted political asylum there by then-president Carlos Menem.

But this protection was revoked shortly before De la Rúa took office, when justice authorities summoned Oviedo, turning him into a fugitive. The former general fled to Brazil last Dec 9, one day before the new president’s inauguration.

Brazilian authorities arrested Oviedo on June 11 and he is currently being held at a Brasilia prison as he awaits extradition to Paraguay.

Félix Argaña commented Monday that the jail break from a secure facility in Buenos Aires has led him to suspect the existence a powerful crime ring capable of bribing just about anyone. Oviedo’s followers are behind the operation, they are attempting to avoid being implicated in the assassination, he maintained.

The late vice-president’s son made a clear distinction between some prominent members of the police force, who he alleges were paid to release the inmates, and the Argentinean government authorities, who he says are making efforts to recapture the fugitives and proceed with their extradition.