This afternoon, the Court of Appeals of La Serena accepted the appeal presented by the Public Ministry and ordered the preventive detention of four members of the Tren de Aragua (TDA) who are accused of being responsible for the crimes of kidnapping and illicit association, and who were released on Monday, after a controversial hearing in which the guarantee judge of Los Vilos, Daniella Pinto, severely reprimanded the assistant prosecutor who attended it.
As reported The counter, Last Monday, the preventive detention that affects several members of the criminal group was reviewed, due to kidnappings carried out between Los Vilos and Valparaíso, who were arrested in November of last year by the Special Police Investigations Brigade (BIPE) of the PDI. The group is led by one of the three founders of the TDA, Larry Amaury Alvarez Núñez, better known as “Larry Changa”, who operated in the kidnappings by giving instructions via WhatsApp, supported by a subject known as “T” and a third party. only known as “White Rat”, none of whom have been arrested.
It is currently believed that “Larry Changa” is outside the country, which is why the Iquique prosecutor’s office requested his extradition.
In a unanimous ruling, the second chamber of the appeal court revoked the appealed resolution, which modified the cause of the precautionary measure of preventive detention of the accused, due to danger of flight, for which it set a bond (bail) of five million pesos. for each defendant, an amount that was paid in cash that same afternoon.
After the hearing, the respective arrest warrants were issued, but the great underlying doubt is whether it will now be possible to find the accused, most of them Venezuelans.
It should be noted that during the hearing, the defense lawyers presented a series of background information regarding their clients for almost 75 minutes, ensuring that their circumstances had changed due to a series of background information they provided. One of them, perhaps the most controversial, as evidenced in the audio of the session, was related to a drone that according to the PDI had been used by one of the accused in order to monitor a victim.
When the magistrate transferred the assistant prosecutor, Luis Muñoz, he responded with respect to all the allegations of the defenses saying that no new information had been provided and regarding the matter of the drone, he assured that “what the Public Ministry says is that, indeed, there were, there are, sufficient indications to establish that this person was carrying out surveillance work regarding the criminal organization, your honor, and that the antecedents he has, true, are precisely, they have to do with audiovisual records taken from the site of event, also on social networks, your honor, by the Investigative Police and, therefore, places him as part of the criminal organization.”
In response to this response, the judge told him “you have to be more precise, prosecutor, if the defenses are making precise allegations, you have to answer me precisely. I know the background, but it can’t make me say, ‘everything is maintained, this is as is.’ “You have to make more precise allegations to me if the defense is disputing specific things.”
After a series of back-and-forths, the magistrate asked him if he had finished testing the device, but given the persecutor’s hesitation, the judge asked him directly “do you know or don’t you know?”
Given the negative response, she said that she was going to inform the chief prosecutor of Los Vilos “to make him aware that the prosecutor who is dependent on the court regarding the review of the precautionary measure, does not fully know the background that motivated the incidents raised by the defenses in relation to the lack of participation of their clients.”
