On February 2, four uniformed members of the CAI Caldas National Police in Kennedy, southwestern Bogotá, fThey were detained and accused of having links with members of theAragua train. The policemen are entangled by audios revealed by the Prosecutor’s Office. Noticias Caracol spoke with two of the uniformed detainees, who say they are threatened.
“Impressive, not only to me, to my family, to my parents,” said Jairo Alexander Pineda, an investigated police patrolman.
Pineda is one of those captured, accused by the authorities of collaborating with the criminal gang the Tren de Aragua. Today, from house arrest and following accepting the charges, he says that he has nothing to do with the crimes committed by this gang.
“It is very nasty that they judge you without having anything to do with it. It is not only one, but they damage the life of an entire family,” he said.
The Prosecutor’s Office points to him as bribery because, according to the investigation, he would have received money to promote crimes of drug trafficking, prostitution, among others. He assures that he accepted these charges because he received threats from the leaders of the Tren de Aragua.
“One of the threats before the hearing was that if I didn’t break in, they would kill my family.“, he claimed.
In another place, on the outskirts of Bogotá, also in house arrest, is Police Sergeant Óscar Javier Vanegas. He, like patrolman Pineda, accepted the charges. He says it was because of intimidation he received while he was at the hearing.
“When a subject came to me, and said: ‘old man go there or if we don’t kill him’I was scared, all nervous, I didn’t know what to do, because I was waiting for my wife,” said Óscar Javier Vanegas, a police sergeant investigated.
While these two police officers with more than 14 years in the institution make these complaints, they involve interceptions revealed by the Prosecutor’s Office. Among them, conversations of alleged bribes in which they asked waiters to sell drugs in some bars in the town of Kennedy.
The policemen’s lawyer says that they prepare all the evidence to prove that their clients are innocent.
“They tell me that there is no procedural or probative material that shows that they have any link with them (the Aragua Train),” said Carlos Rivera, defense attorney.
Four policemen are detained for alleged links with the Aragua Train and respond for bribery. Meanwhile, today there were reports of new threats to Kennedy merchants, apparently coming from this criminal organization.
