Alleged person responsible for the disappearance of a priest in Pereira was captured in France

The captured person, according to the review of security cameras carried out by the Judicial and Criminal Investigation Section (Sijín), of the Metropolitan Police of Pereira, appears in the Nissan Frontier pickup truck of the priest when they left the María Auxiliadora parish, located in the Turín neighborhood, in the capital of Risaralda, in an unknown direction.

That man is the last person Father Valencia was seen with six days ago and for this reason the Fifth Municipal Criminal Court of Guarantees of Pereira issued an arrest warrant against him.

Apparently, the now captured man unexpectedly left for Europe last weekend and was detained at the Charles de Gaulle airport in the French capital while the Parisian authorities clarified with the Colombian authorities the man’s judicial situation.

The mayor of Pereira, Mauricio Salazar, stated last Monday that the man worked at a service station located in the central area of ​​Ciudad Victoria. and left his job last Friday.

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Before meeting the now captured man, the father had breakfast, as he often did, with his mother in a cafeteria. In a video from a security camera you can see the religious man wearing dark pants, a casual t-shirt and a briefcase that he had across his chest.​

On the morning of this Tuesday, April 30, the commander of the Pereira Metropolitan Police, Colonel Ruth Alexandra Díaz, reported that they would ask Interpol to issue the Red Circular so that the French police could capture the subject. The request was granted and the French authorities executed the international judicial order in practically record time.

After the capture of the main suspect, it is expected that he will be deported to the country, where he will have to answer for the crime of forced disappearance. However, what the priest’s family, friends, relatives and the Diocese of Pereira are asking is that he say where Father Valencia is, if he is alive or dead, since His truck was found last Friday in a car wash in Viterbo (Caldas), with traces of blood and without one of his chairs..

The Diocese of Pereira counts the days of Father Valencia’s disappearance and in all the churches in its jurisdiction they ask for his soon return.

Father Darío Valencia Uribe is 59 years old, he was born in the municipality of Risaralda (Caldas). At the beginning of his priestly life he was in the Purembará village, in an indigenous reservation in the municipality of Mistrató (Risaralda), he has been parish priest in several churches, rector of the Major Seminary and rector of the Catholic University of Pereira.

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