Suspect arrested in Costa Rica for the murder of Ronald Ojeda

• The Chilean Ministry of the Interior confirmed that the detainee is Maikel Villegas Rodríguez, who had an Interpol red alert. The authorities are in the process of verifying his identity in order to manage his extradition.

Costa Rican authorities arrested a man on July 12 who they identified as suspected of participating in the murder of Venezuelan lieutenant Ronald Ojedawhich occurred in Chile in February. The EFE news agency reported on the arrest, citing sources from the Ministry of Public Security, but this agency has not yet made a public announcement.

Later, Chilean Interior Minister Manuela Monsalve confirmed the arrest of Maikel Villegas Rodríguez. She added that Costa Rican authorities are currently verifying his identity. “Although all available information points in that direction, certainty will be obtained through fingerprint tests, which are already in process,” she said.

For its part, the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said it would initiate the request for Villegas’ extradition once his identity was verified. The suspect was a fugitive from justice and had a red notice with Interpol.

According to sources consulted by EFE, Villegas, a Venezuelan national, was arrested precisely when he was trying to cross the border into Panama, in the town of Paso Canoas, and the Interpol alert was activated when his documents were reviewed.

The case

Funeral of Ronald Ojeda. Photo: La Tercera

The Chilean government issued an international arrest warrant once morest Villegas since March 6, 2024. He is accused of being one of the three subjects who, pretending to be police officers, broke into Ronald Ojeda’s home, in Santiago de Chile, in the early hours of February 21, 2024 to kidnap him and take him to an unknown place where they tortured himAfter being missing for days, Ojeda’s body was found on March 1, buried under a concrete slab.

Villegas was identified as one of the main suspects along with Walter de Jesús Rodríguez, another Venezuelan who already had a criminal record for extortion and kidnapping in Chile. The authorities of that country said that both would be related to the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua, which was charged with the murder of Ojeda.

So far, the only person arrested in the case is a 17-year-old Venezuelan teenager, who Villegas and Rodríguez paid to drive the vehicle in which they took the former military man from his residence. They identified Villegas following changing cars, when he refueled at a gas station and paid using his Unique Taxpayer Identification Number (RUT). His name and face were recorded by security cameras, so the authorities proceeded to tap his phone. His last call was recorded on February 25 in the border region of Arica, so a police operation was deployed to search for them.

Although authorities knew that Villegas and Rodríguez had managed to escape the country, it was presumed that they might have returned to Venezuela.

Political overtones

Photo: Courtesy

Ronald Ojeda was an Army lieutenant who had been arrested and tortured on several occasions throughout his career for rebellion and treason. In 2017, he managed to escape with several companions while they were being transferred from the courts to the Ramo Verde Military Prison. The group managed to flee to Peru, and Ojeda later settled in Chile, where he obtained political asylum in 2023.

In December 2023, the government of Nicolás Maduro announced the capture on the Colombian-Venezuelan border of Captain Anyelo Heredia, another former political prisoner who allegedly led an attempted military rebellion that the Public Prosecutor’s Office called Operation White Bracelet. Ojeda was identified as one of the alleged participants in the conspiracy, and at the time of his kidnapping, he was in the process of changing his asylum to Spain.

For all these reasons, figures such as former police commissioner and former political prisoner Iván Simonovis accused Maduro’s government of being behind Ojeda’s kidnapping, in an attempt to send him back to Venezuela. Initially, he pointed to officials from the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) as the perpetrators, especially following the wounds on the victim’s body matched those from several cases of torture reported by this agency.

However, the Chilean Prosecutor’s Office is treating the case as a possible hitman for the Aragua Train, but agrees with the possibility of a political motivation. This produced diplomatic tensions between the governments of Chile and Venezuela, who have exchanged notes of protestdespite having an agreement to cooperate on the case.

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