The Prosecutor’s Office charged two members of the Colombian Police for their alleged participation in an event that occurred on February 27 in Puerto Leguízamo, in the department of Putumayo (south) in which a soldier died and the indigenous leader Luis Evelio Rodríguez was illegally detained.
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According to the investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office, on February 26, soldier Alexander Orozco fired his service rifle, ending the lives of three of his companions in the 49th Jungle Battalion and then fled.
The next day, police units saw him paddling a canoe on the Caquetá River and one of the patrolmen, Darwin Emilio Arcos, shot him, leaving him wounded. The soldier died a few days later in a care center in Florencia (departmental capital of Caquetá).
The Prosecutor’s Office accuses him of possible disproportionate use of force, since the soldier was in the canoe in a defenseless state and did not represent a danger.
Police
After these events, Deputy Mayor Mendoza Chilama ordered the capture of the indigenous leader Rodríguez Arigatoque, who was observing the transfer of the injured soldier across the river. During the arrest, they were seized 27 million ($6,100 or 5,800 euros) that he carried in a briefcase to pay the workers of a social project.
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According to what the Police said at the time, they detained the indigenous leader because he was supposedly helping the soldier flee. But according to the Prosecutor’s Office there was no basis or support for such a statement, so he was released.
Both detainees have been charged with the crimes of aggravated homicide, illegal deprivation of liberty, procedural fraud, and qualified and aggravated robbery, charges that the defendants have not accepted.
EFE
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