This Thursday, Gabriel Boric ordered the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alberto Alberto van Klaveren, to present a note of protest to Venezuela through diplomatic channels, arguing that “Chile is a serious country, where institutions work, where there is separation of powers, and where the Prosecutor’s Office and the Public Ministry are carrying out a serious, responsible investigation.” The decision of the highest Chilean authority comes after the statements of the Attorney General of Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, in which he pointed out that the crime against former lieutenant Ronald Ojeda – an opponent of the Government of Nicolás Maduro and a political refugee in Chile, where was kidnapped and murdered in February – it was a “false flag operation” plotted by Chilean and foreign intelligence bodies with “spurious interests.”
This Thursday night the Chilean Foreign Ministry reported that Boric’s decision was finalized and the protest note was presented to the Venezuelan ambassador to Chile, Arévalo Méndez. Almost at the same time, prosecutor William Saab reiterated his criticism and said that the investigation carried out by Chile “lacks professionalism, it lacks elements of real conviction.”
In an intervention in La Moneda in the afternoon, the Chilean president assured that “the comments of the Venezuelan prosecutor show that there is no adequate will to be able to resolve a case that is tremendously complex.” “We are going to insist at all levels, without naivety, for this to change,” he added. The Chilean president said that “all the mechanisms that exist in foreign relations will be exercised to ensure that this atrocious crime does not remain unpunished and that it is tried and punished in Chile.” Furthermore, he clarified that “if another organization, particularly the Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office, has serious, real records, they have to make them available to the Chilean Prosecutor’s Office.” He made it clear, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had also stated, that diplomatic relations with Venezuela will be maintained.
The highest authority also responded to criticism regarding the “naivety” that his Government has had in expecting Venezuela’s collaboration in the case of Ronald Ojeda. “I constantly hear statements that can be very grandiose, but what has proven to work is serious work, work when there is bilateral cooperation. And I have no doubt that when the institutions of our country are insulted, or denigrated, or questioned, we have to respond very clearly and firmly, as our chancellor has done, as I am doing.” Boric clarified.
According to prosecutor William Saab, the Constitution of his country prohibits the extradition of his compatriots. Boric said that the Foreign Minister of Chile, at the request of the president, has to “review cases that may have happened in other countries, where, for example, Interpol or other multilateral cooperation bodies can also make resolutions and help us resolve this case, because the important thing here is that the whole truth is known here, there is justice and In that I fully trust the Chilean institutions.” Regarding the ongoing investigation, he stated that “what we have demanded is the collaboration of the Venezuelan Government to catch the criminals who murdered Mr. Ojeda and therefore, we are going to continue to do so, both through bilateral relations, but also in multilateral instances.”
The statement made by Tarek William Saab clashes with that of the Chilean prosecutor Héctor Barros, who pointed out last April that the main strand of the investigation of the crime committed in Santiago de Chile indicates that there was a political motive and that it was organized from Venezuela.
Ronald Ojeda, 32, lived on the 14th floor of a building in the Independencia municipality of Santiago de Chile with his wife and young son. He was kidnapped at 3:10 in the morning on February 21 by three subjects with their faces covered and wearing false uniforms of the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI), who took him out in his underwear. A fourth waited in the concierge and at least one, a 17-year-old Venezuelan youth, the only one detained in Chile, collaborated. Everything was recorded in a video of the building.
The kidnapping has been considered unusual because of the way it was committed: with subjects dressed as police officers, with early morning entry into an apartment and without a ransom being requested. There are at least three elements that differ of the modus operandi that the Aragua Train had when it committed this same crime in Chile. But it coincides with the way the body was buried, since in the extreme north of Chile there are similar burials under cement.
The new controversy surrounding the crime of Ojeda, whose body was found on March 2 buried under cement inside a suitcase, comes a week after prosecutor William Saab sent two prosecutors to Santiago to gather information about the case, which only They were received by the person responsible for international relations in the Prosecutor’s Office: they were not allowed access to the investigative file or any element related to the investigation, according to the left-wing Administration.
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