MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Paraguay's gov't ups bounty for heads of EPP guerrilla leaders

“The calls are confidential,” Riera underlined

Paraguayan authorities have launched a ₲ 7 billion (around US$ 894,366) reward for anyone supplying “accurate, certain, and responsible” information on members of the Paraguayan People's Army (EPP) guerrilla as the government of President Sebastián Peña intends to solve the case of three people kidnapped by the Marxist organization, including former Vice President Óscar Denis, it was announced this week in Asunción.

”There is the institutional political will of the Government to pay up to ₲ 7 billion for those who give us accurate, certain, responsible information, to be able to locate them, arrest them, and submit them to justice,“ Interior Minister Enrique Riera said during a press conference. The official also underlined that the outlaw grouping caused ”pain” to the families of the victims.

In addition to Denis, also missing is Police Officer Edelio Morínigo, kidnapped by the EPP in 2014, and cattle rancher Félix Urbieta, who went missing in 2016 at the hands of the Mariscal López Army (EML), a spinoff guerrilla group.

Riera also announced that flyers “with the faces, names and aliases” of 14 EPP suspects would be distributed “in strategic areas,” particularly in the country's northern region. However, it would also help if “through the media, this message can reach everyone,” Riera insisted. The minister also pointed out that tips could be submitted through an anti-kidnapping *377 telephone line.

“We ask you to please use the channel, the calls are confidential, and that you help us so that Paraguay recovers peace and that these families can put -if we do not find them alive- at least a candle in a place to pray to their loved ones,” Riera also argued.

Back in 2020 when Denis was kidnapped then-President Mario Abdo Benítez's administration offered a ₲ 1 billion reward that bore no fruit. Denis' daughter Myriam Beatriz said after conferring with Peña that this time around there was a “formal commitment” to further equip the so-called Joint Task Force (FTC) and other law-enforcement squads to tackle the EPP. ”As long as we don't have this result (of finding the three kidnapped), all the work, all the effort that is made, for us is not enough,” she said after an interview with the head of state at the Mburuvicha Róga residence.

Also participating at the gathering were Denis' sister María Lorena and Morínigo's mother Obdulia Florenciano, among other personalities.

Also this week, Paraguayan National Police Anti-Kidnapping Department Head Nimio Cardozo said that the EPP's recruiting strategy involved bringing adolescents into Argentina where they were indoctrinated and given documents from that country before crossing back the corder for military training.