The kidnapping of 87 police officers in San Vicente del Caguan at the beginning of the month continues to generate controversy, while the investigations are advancing and there are already determinations, such as the arrest warrant against the police commander in the department of Caquetá.
On the one hand, the Minister of the Interior, Alfonso Prada, who at the time described it as “a humanitarian siege”, yesterday came out to reject the statement of the director of the Police, General Henry Sanabria, who maintained that the senior official was exchanged for the uniformed
The while of the institution were kidnapped for 40 hours by the so-called Peasant Guard three weeks ago in the area of Los Pozos, in the municipality of San Vicente del Caguan.
“If you listen calmly, clearly to the statement of the General Director of the Police, Sanabria literally says that the high officials were not kidnapped (…) I could move wherever I wanted, I could go to the store to buy what I wanted. I would like, no problem, and at night I slept in the Cazadores battalion of the Colombian Army in San Vicente del Caguan,” said the head of the Ministry of the Interior.
“There was no such thing – exchange – but the fulfillment of a condition to advance in the dialogue: the safe and sound release of the 78 police officers,” Prada asserted.
However, in dialogue with Noticias Caracol, General Sanabria classified these acts as a kidnapping, also revealed that the protesters threatened to kill seven police officers and said that the key to achieving the release of the uniformed officers is that the Minister of the Interior, Alfonso Prada, was exchanged.
“He did it so they would let the policemen out because later he stayed, he practically exchanged himself for the policemen and there were moments of tension. By placing that in the protocol, the presence of the minister was required and he was the guarantor of the delivery, ”he said.
“With the Minister of Defense, the Interior, the High Commissioner, the Commander of the Military Forces and the person who is speaking to you, we were at the site receiving the police officers and the Minister told us: I am staying here so that you can go out. It is an act of courage by the Minister of the Interior that we recognize from the Police, ”he added.
“It was an obligatory requirement for them to turn me in to the police (…) They leave, they get on the helicopters and take them to Florencia, to Neiva and others stay in San Vicente del Caguan. And we stayed with our team from the ministry and the ministers of Mines, Transport and the Environment were also there, ”he said.
For Minister Prada, it should be the Prosecutor’s Office and the judicial bodies that determine if a kidnapping occurred there or not. “Both the opinion of the director of the Police and mine are only comments from officials who were in the episode, who have a perception of everything that happened there, but the qualification of whether or not there was a crime is theirs,” Indian.
On the other hand, the Military Criminal Justice ordered the capture of the commander of the Caquetá Police, Colonel Javier Antonio Castro, for the alleged crime of omission regarding the kidnapping of the 78 police officers in the Los Pozos sector.
The officer was being investigated for an alleged omission in response to the call for help from the uniformed officers, who were kidnapped for more than 48 hours by the protesters, in events where a policeman and a farmer lost their lives, when these communities took the facilities of the oil company Emerald Energy.