Assembly approves report on the case of General Jorge Gabela

Ecuadornews:

After an intense debate, the Plenary of the Assembly approved on Tuesday, November20, 2018, the report of the Multiparty Commission that gathered informationabout the assassination of General Jorge Gabela.

The document was approved with 75 affirmative votes and 17 abstentions, and will be sent to the Attorney General’s Office as an input for the investigations that are being conducted on the crime that occurred in 2010. César Litardo (Ap), president of the Commission, and legislators of opposition parties such as Jeannine Cruz, of Creo, César Rohon, of Psc, Sebastián Palacios, of Suma, defended the validity of the report.

Litardo stressed that for almost four months the body that led received 32 appearances and made 80 requests for information. And so he could determine the certainty of the participation of organized crime in the assassination of General Gabela.

While from the correísta bank, Marcela Aguiñaga, Gabriela Rivadeneira and Esteban Melo, rejected the conclusions that it contains and in which it is alluded to several ex officials of the previous Regime and even to the own ex-president Rafael Correa.

Aguiñaga, who also formed part of the Commission and abstained from approving the text, called the work done “incoherent and unprofessional”, and stressed that legislators did not have to classify the event as a possible “State crime.” “He acted irresponsibly, negligently and in bad faith,” said Rivadeneira, who questioned Litardo for “his stupidity” had he not summoned her to set out his views on the investigations that occurred when she was at the head of the assembly.

The socialist Silvia Salgado, on the other hand, qualified that she can only answer for her vote and not for all the processes of political control that took place over the purchase of Dhruv helicopters, to which the crime of Gabela is tied.

Previously, the Plenary heard Patricia Ochoa, widow of the former commander of the Ecuadorian Air Force, who thanked the members of the Commission for having revealed “part of the truth”, and the Assembly for having allowed her to clear her husband’s name. “Eight years I have waited for a truth and they look me in the face telling me the truth, eight years of a murder, 10 years that my husband in a Commission denounced his persecution, denounced that he was threatened and nothing happened,” she emphasized.  

Ochoa also demanded that justice be done for the relatives of the fatalities that were charged by the helicopter accidents, whose purchase was opposed by the former commander. “I do not know how you can live with so much blood on your hands, and I’m convinced that blood on your hands is because you do not have conscience because people with conscience cannot act like that,” she said.

Thereport recommends that the Office of the Comptroller establish the practice ofa special audit on the asset declaration of the officials and ex-officers who intervenedin the purchase of the Dhruv helicopters. (I)

Source: https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/asamblea-aprueba-informe-caso-gabela.html