SANTIAGO, CHILE.– Walter Rodríguez Pérez, with an arrest warrant by the justice of Chili for allegedly leading the kidnapping and murder of the retired Venezuelan lieutenant, Roland Ojeda, in Santiago, he was a worker for the former Minister of Petroleum, Tarek El Aissamisince he was governor of Aragua, where the criminal gang the Tren de Aragua emerged, according to local media.
Rodríguez Pérez worked for a couple of months in 2015 in the office of Governor El Aissami, according to data from the official website of the Venezuelan Social Security Institute found by the newspaper. The Mercury, but it does not specify the function it played. El Aissami left the governorship after the regional elections of October 2017, but he had already been appointed Executive Vice President by Nicolás Maduro in January of that year.
At the beginning of March, the prosecutor of the Chilean court, Esteban Silva, revealed that Walter Rodríguez Pérez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan, is one of the executors of a criminal operation against the exmmilitaryand related to the Aragua Train.
Now, the Chilean justice investigates the employment relationship between Rodríguez Pérez and El Aissamiwhom the Venezuelan regime has hidden for a year, while he was governor of Aragua, a state then identified as the most violent state in Venezuela.
Ojeda, crime under suspicion
Ojeda was found dead “from positional mechanical asphyxiation” nine days after being forcibly removed from his residence, in the north of Santiago, on February 21 at dawn.
The incident, which was recorded showing four armed men in Chilean security uniforms, was classified as a kidnapping, but his alleged kidnappers never asked for money or any material goods in exchange.
Rodríguez Pérez was recently recognized as one of the suspects in the video that was analyzed by Chilean prosecutors and spread online.
The suspect fled Chile, along with another still unidentified individual, who participated in the crime of the former Venezuelan military man. Both are wanted by Chilean justice with international arrest warrants.
Meanwhile, in the case only a young Venezuelan identified as Ángel, 17 years old, who entered the Chilean country illegally, and who is also linked to the criminal gang, is being detained and prosecuted. The defendant would have participated in the surveillance point that the suspects set up to facilitate the kidnapping, as he told investigators. He said he was unaware of the plan because he was only invited to eat hamburgers.
The Aissami and the Aragua Train
Establishing the alleged participation of Rodríguez Pérez in the Ojeda crime would be key to clearing up the prosecutors’ range of hypotheses, among which is the political motive. “It is not ruled out,” they said recently.
El Aissami, as governor, and General Néstor Reverol, as general commander of the GN, were from 2015 to 2016 the main security authorities in the state of Aragua. Later, both were ministers of the Office of Interior Relations, Justice and Peace.
It was there and in those years when the criminal gang Tren de Aragua was formed inside the Tocorón prison and moved its powerful tentacles, without impediments of any kind, through several states and countries in Latin America, with economic activities, such as smuggling. of scrap, illegal mining and illegal gold extraction, indicates the investigation carried out by journalist Ronna Rísquez.
FOUNTAIN: With information from El Mercurio, latercera.com, Diario Las Américas
