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The leader of the insurgent group Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP) was killed on October 23 along with two other members of the Marxist gang that has been operating in northern Paraguay for 14 years, President Mario Abdo Benítez and the police announced.
“Three members of the EPP [Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo]identified as Osvaldo Daniel Villalba, alias Commander Alexander, Luciano Argüello, and an indigenous person with the alias Simón, were killed by the military in the area of Cerro Guazú, department of Amambay, on Sunday,” said the anti-kidnapping chief, Commissioner Nimio Cardozo, in statements to journalists this Monday, October 24.
“submit to due process”
Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benítez had announced on Sunday that the deaths of the insurgents at the hands of the armed forces occurred “after a year and more of intelligence work.”
The president returned to “make a call for peace in Paraguay” and urged the band’s insurgents who remain in the north to surrender. “Let them lay down their weapons and we give them all the guarantees that they will submit to due process,” said Abdo.
This is the “most important” operation carried out against the EPP since it began operating in the north of the country in 2008, said Commissioner Cardozo. Villalba was considered the boss of the EPP along with his ex-wife Magna Meza.
“They executed two people”
Nimio Cardozo specified that the confrontation with members of the EPP took place on Sunday afternoon on the slopes of Guasú, considered by the indigenous people to be a sacred hill, located 500 km northeast of Asunción.
Hours before the event, “those from the EPP executed two people from the Pai Taviterá indigenous community accused of leaking information” to the military about the armed group and Villalba, for whom the government offered a $150,000 reward, the prosecutor in charge reported. of the fact, Lorenzo Lezcano.
A third seriously injured indigenous man was transferred to the capital and admitted to an intensive care unit, the prosecutor added. “There were no casualties or injuries in the military forces,” said the military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Luis Apezteguía.
The EPP, which is influenced by liberation theology, is a split from the Patria Libre party, founded in 1990, which defines itself as Marxist and anti-imperialist and which participated in elections 20 years ago. The authorities attribute some 80 deaths of civilians, police and military since then, in addition to twenty kidnappings and periodic extortion of ranchers.
