MADRID 27 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A Chilean appeals court confirmed this Wednesday the preventive detention for Maichel Villegas, extradited from Costa Rica after being accused of being linked to the kidnapping and murder of former Venezuelan military officer Ronald Ojeda.
This occurs after Villegas’ defense filed an appeal against the measure decreed by the Third Guarantee Court of Santiago and alleged that he had not presented sufficient evidence for the existence of an “effective risk of flight” of his client, as stated. Bío Bío Chile.
A 17-year-old Venezuelan boy was sentenced last October by the Chilean Justice to five years in prison for participating in the plot to murder Ojeda, who lived in Santiago de Chile as a political asylum. A third person is also involved in the case.
The trace of the lieutenant, who escaped at the end of 2017 from a prison in Venezuela and went into exile in Chile, was lost in the early hours of February 21, when hooded individuals pretending to be police officers entered his home and kidnapped him.
Ojeda’s body was located inside a suitcase buried under a cement structure. Prosecutor Héctor Barros related the crime to “a context of organized transnational crime linked to the Aragua Train.”