Brazil arrests drug trafficker on the run from Paraguay after prison van attack

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Samudio “was arrested in a locality of Mato Grosso, after months of intelligence work between Senad Special Agents and Brazil’s Federal Police,” the Paraguayan agency said in a statement without giving further details.

The Senad recalled that he is “considered a high-ranking leader belonging to the criminal organization” that maneuvered together with the Brazilian group Comando Vermelho to send drugs to Brazil and that the Paraguayan justice system wanted him since 2011 until his capture in October 2018.

The source recalled that he was rescued on September 11, 2019, in Asunción in a “commando-type attack” executed by “highly armed criminals who mounted an ambush when he was being transferred from the Palace of Justice to the Emboscada Penitentiary”, north of the capital.

In that action died National Police Commissioner Felix Ferrari, who was part of the police caravan guarding the van transporting Samudio to a court proceeding.

His arrest in the neighboring country came five days after the arrest on the outskirts of Asunción of one of the alleged members of the group of men who ambushed the prison van with gunfire.

He is 24-year-old Fredy Esteban González Núñez, whose fingerprints appeared on some of the objects analyzed after the rescue, Police Commissioner Pedro Lesme, who participated in the arrest, told the media.

Samura “had great purchasing power and an iron fist leadership that included executions, which is why he was able to sustain a large infrastructure, logistics, and a large number of criminals who were under his charge,” said Senad.

The anti-drug agencies attributed profits of around US$20 million a month to his criminal operations, based on “the amount of drugs he was in charge of trafficking by air, operating in rural properties located in the departments of Amambay, Concepcion and Alto Paraguay,” all on the border with Brazil.

Samura’s escape had caused the dismissal of the then Minister of Justice, Julio Javier Ríos, and the Commander of the National Police, Walter Vázquez.

Subsequently, Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benítez acknowledged that “there was corruption and money involved” in the escape. Samudio had been arrested in October 2018 in an anti-drug operation in northeastern Paraguay, on the border with Brazil.

He had been wanted since May 2011 in the South American country following an operation in which 370 kilos of cocaine and eight small planes were seized in the department of Concepcion.

The Red Command (Comando Vermelho) and the First Capital Command (PCC), the two main Brazilian criminal groups, have branches in Paraguay, where they control drug and arms trafficking.

Source: EFE