You have to love this headline. The “missing opposition figure” isn’t missing!
Ex-Ecuador leader sought in case of missing opposition figure
In 2012, Fernando Balda was the victim of a foiled kidnapping in COLOMBIA. If Balda was ever “missing” it was for a few hours (if that) back in 2012! The culprits were tried and convicted in Colombia. The authors of this article also have Venezuela on the brain. I wonder why? They wrote in the first sentence
A court in Quito on Monday (Jun 18) ordered testimony from Ecuador’s ex-president Rafael Correa, who lives in Belgium, in the investigation of an opposition figure’s apparent 2012 kidnapping in Venezuela.
Balda was later deported from Colombia because he was on the lamb from Ecuador’s judicial system. Ecuador’s intelligence services were keeping tabs on Balda and presumably other criminals in Colombia.
An AP report (“Court includes Ecuador’s ex-President Correa in kidnap probe“) says that Balda had “fled to Colombia’s capital to escape what he considered persecution by Correa”. Nice way to avoid saying Balda had been convicted in Ecuador for libel which is part of its criminal code.
The AP report also claimed “A Colombian court found that Balda’s abductors were hired by members of Ecuador’s intelligence agency at the time Correa was president.”
The convicted Colombians are reported to have named Ecuadorian police in “cooperation” for a reduced sentence.
Durante el proceso, los ciudadanos colombianos capturados cooperaron con la Fiscalía de su país y declararon que ellos solo fueron contratados por un agente que trabajaba en la Policía ecuatoriana.
That’s doesn’t mean that the Colombian court ruled that what the kidnappers claimed about Ecuadorian police was true. It might have, but I’ve not found anything showing that.
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