The body of Marcelo Pecci, the Paraguayan anti-drug prosecutor assassinated by assassins in Colombia last Tuesday, arrived this Saturday in Asuncion on a commercial flight from Cartagena de Indias.
The coffin was received by national authorities at the presidential breakwater of the “Silvio Pettirossi” international airport in the Paraguayan capital at 5:10 local time. The coffin was later taken to a wake room.
Pecci was a specialized prosecutor against organized crime, drug trafficking, money laundering and financing of terrorism. His wife, Claudia Aguilera, a television journalist and witness to the crime on a beach on Barú Island, in the Colombian Caribbean and near Cartagena, had already returned to the Paraguayan capital on Thursday.
The couple enjoyed their honeymoon after getting married on April 30, when the attack that ended with the murder of the prosecutor took place on the beach in front of the sea. The woman said they were expecting a child.
Pecci’s remains, which will be buried this Sunday, were transferred to be veiled at the headquarters of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and then they will make a brief visit to the traditional Colegio San José where he studied and at the headquarters of the Guaraní soccer club.of the Paraguayan First Division, in which he served as manager.
On Friday, his colleagues from the Public Ministry, former colleagues and friends organized a repudiation march through central streets to demand justice and punishment for the intellectual and material authors of the notorious crime. The authorities offer a reward equivalent to about 488 thousand dollars for information that allows the capture of the murderers.
The commissioner of investigations, Nimio Cardozo, who returned from Colombia, where he participated in the investigations, reported that Pecci was shot three times that caused his death almost instantly. “He was gathering his belongings with his wife when he was ambushed” by the assassins, he explained..
Pecci, much frequented by the media about his causes related to drug trafficking and money laundering, worked in the collection of evidence against defendants of Colombian, Lebanese and Brazilian nationality, among others. In the case of one of them, the Brazilian of Lebanese origin Kassem Mohamad Hijazi, a judge ordered his extradition to the United States in April.
Two other Lebanese with Brazilian nationality, Mahmoud Ali Barakat and Nader Mohamad Farhat, They had already been extradited to the United States in 2018 and 2019 after judicial proceedings for money laundering (allegedly for the Lebanese Islamic movement Hezbollah) in which the prosecutor participated.