The house in the Los Olivos neighborhood, where Naín Andrés Pérez Toncel, alias Bendito Menor or ‘Naín’ (one of the 10 most wanted criminals in the country), and his partner, Rosa Angélica Tarazona, alias La Bebecita, were killed, was the third that the police special operations group inspected last Thursday in La Guajira.
“The operation -named ‘Centinela de la Patria’- was initially going to be launched in Alta Guajira, in the rural area of the Uribia municipality, in an indigenous community. But the information from an informant and a decoy set for them made us return to Riohacha,” an officer from Dijín who participated in the raid on the leader of the Autodefensas Conquistadores de la Sierra told EL TIEMPO’s Investigative Unit, a strategy documented in photos and videos.
The drug business
The circulating information was that ‘Bendito Menor’ was going to arrive at an indigenous community, where he intimidated its leaders, to spend the night there.
“But, after some meetings he had there in Alta Guajira, he went to collect money from a drug trafficking business at the house where we neutralized him. At that moment, we already knew that he himself met with drug traffickers and merchants to collect protection money and extortions,” added the investigator.
He also explained that although a human source had revealed the location of the house where ‘Bendito Menor’ was killed, since Thursday morning they sent investigators disguised as civilians to the Los Olivos neighborhood, where the house the criminal had arrived at since dawn was located.
Added to that was that they were monitoring a hearing in which ‘La Bebecita’ was seeking a plea agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office, revealed by EL TIEMPO’s Investigative Unit.
The sellers
Three officers posed as fruit sellers and mototaxi drivers to monitor the area.
“Our intelligence men noticed movements of people posing as mototaxi drivers, who were actually members of the ‘Bendito Menor’ organization providing him with information. Seeing those unusual movements, we managed to corroborate the source’s information: he was at that property,” the investigator assured.
He added: “Once it was established that the target was at the location, the commandos entered the site to proceed with the capture, but the first to react was ‘Bendito Menor’, then his henchmen and his partner. That is when they died during the police operation.”
Grenades and rifles
The Dijín member concluded by explaining that the bodyguards of ‘Bendito Menor’ carried fragmentation grenades and that one of them even had one in a bag. Also, long and short firearms.
“For this operation, for at least two months, we were working independently: Dijín on one side, while Gaula, Military Forces, and Dipol on the other. The Government of President Abelardo De La Espriella ordered that this was a primary target and that our capabilities be united to achieve the result that today is tangible.”
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
u.investigativa@eltiempo.com
@UinvestigativaET
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