Paraguayan president removes justice minister a few hours after taking office
The President of Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benítez, ordered on Tuesday the dismissal of the new Minister of Justice, Edgar Taboada Insfrán, a few hours after taking office.
The reason was that he had allowed the coffin of Osvaldo Villalba, maximum leader of the self-styled Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP), to enter the women’s prison of Asunción “El Buen Pastor”, so that his sister, Carmen Villalba, imprisoned there, could pay homage to him.
This after a group of approximately one hundred people accompanying Villalba’s body stood in front of the main entrance of the prison demanding the entry of the coffin, before the burial in the Recoleta de Asunción cemetery, located a few meters away from the prison.
“The entry of a coffin into a penitentiary center is a situation not foreseen in the Law, and after the corresponding analysis, the decision was taken to remove the official”, informed Hernán Huttemann, head of the Civil Cabinet of the Government of Paraguay, in a press conference.
In the same case, the director of the penitentiary, Marian Vázquez, was also dismissed, who declared to the media that she agreed to the request of Villalba’s relatives due to the pressure and the threat of a riot by the inmates inside the penitentiary.
It should be recalled that Osvaldo Villalba was killed last Sunday, along with two other members of the EPP, during a confrontation with soldiers of the Joint Task Force (FTC), which took place in a rural colony of Pedro Juan Caballero, department of Amambay.
His sister, Carmen Villalba, has been held in the “El Buen Pastor” women’s penitentiary since 2004 for a kidnapping case and a new sentence for attempted homicide after escaping from the penitentiary in 2020 and was later recaptured.
Edgar Taboada Insfrán was sworn in this Tuesday as the new Minister of Justice, replacing Edgar Olmedo, who President Abdo Benítez appointed as representative of the Executive Power before the Council of the Magistracy (CM).
Replacing Taboada Insfrán, the current vice-minister of Criminal Policy, Daniel Benítez, was appointed as interim in charge of the office, according to Hernán Huttemann.
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