MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Colombian media say international terrorism had to do with prosecutor's killing

Many of the cases Pecci handled involved mafia groups from the Triple Border, said Vargas

Two Lebanese nationals and a Brazilian citizen are suspected of having been involved in the murder of Paraguayan Prosecutor Marcelo Pecci while he was honeymooning in Colombia with his wife Claudia Aguilera earlier this week, it was reported.

According to the El Colombiano website, the three suspects are linked to the terrorist organization Hezbollah.

“The authorities of Colombia, the United States, and Paraguay put the spotlight on three names that had been hidden until now: Kassed Mohamad Hijazi, Nader Mohamad Farhat, and Mahmoud Alí Barakat,” the report said.

The three suspects had been arrested at some point on Pecci's orders for their alleged involvement in money-laundering activities. All three of them had been extradited to the United States for their financial maneuvers with drug-trafficking money.

Nader Mohamad Farhat and Mahmoud Alí Barakat were allegedly members of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah and investigators considered them to be the organization's contacts for negotiating drugs with cartels in Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina.

The Colombian newspaper El Tiempo had already reported that one of the first lines of investigation after Pecci's death pointed towards an international terrorist organization.

Sleuths suspect Pecci's crime could have been conceived in a US prison by Nader Mohamad Farhat, who was arrested in 2018 in Ciudad del Este and extradited in June 2019.

Colombian Police Chief General Luis Vargas told reporters Thursday that significant progress had been made in the investigation of Pecci's assassination. However, he only hinted the murder could be connected to Pecci's anti-drug work without mentioning any other details.

“The main hypothesis that we have from the investigation is that the crime is related to the tasks that the prosecutor was carrying out,” said Vargas, who also pointed out the hit had the appearance of transnational organized crimes. “We understand that many of the cases he had are from the mafia that exists in the Triple Border,” said Vargas in a radio interview.

The Colombian police released the sketch of one of the suspects and offered a US$ 489,391 reward for information leading to his capture. Vargas also said that one of the alleged assassins has a Caribbean accent, is about 1.70 m tall, and has a dark complexion.

(Source: Última Hora)