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Request to remove parts of the report of the case Gabela came from an email without a sender
Posted On 28 Aug 2018
Ecuadornews:
From an e-mail in which the name of the sender cannot be identified, the pages and annexes of the report prepared by the expert Roberto Meza on the murder of the general of the Ecuadorian Air Force (FAE) Jorge Gabela were requested.
On May 2, 2014, the Argentine specialist received an e-mail from the electronic address “comentariosfinalesobservaciones@outlook.com“, in which he was asked to delete pages 29 and 30, which contained technical observations.
Of the 32 and 35 it was requested that the whole page be removed on the “planimetric survey of the National Police”; and, the conclusion and review of the fiscal file. From 78 and 79, “all recommendations”; of the 83, eliminate “the analysis of the testimony of the protected witness”. From 84 and 85, the radiographic report; and, finally, that “there should be no annexes”.
Meza was hired by an Interinstitutional Committee (which comprised five State ministries and was created in 2012 by former President Rafael Correa) to make an expert report on the events surrounding the assassination of Gabela in 2010, and if this was due to their allegations of irregularities in the purchase of seven Dhruv helicopters for the FAE.
Meza does not know who the author of the e-mail is and he fears that he created it “on purpose”, because it is not even “signed by someone”. When he answered, without understanding why, the communication was with Paola Carrera, secretary of the Committee and then an official of the Ministry of Justice, who “did nothing without someone’s order,” the researcher clarified.
She would have said: “Roberto, do you have any news (about the request for changes)?”; and the researcher assures that he answered that he was not going to do them because it “meant mutilating” his investigation.
One month before this email, on April 22, 2014, the expert had received another communication from Carrera informing him that the “Deputy Minister of Justice, Augusto Ochoa, requires urgent communication” to make a “presentation of the Gabela case”.
This information is contained in a presentation made by Meza on August 14, to the Occasional Legislative Committee that analyzes the case.
In that, appears the mail of Outlook asking to eliminate the pages.
Ochoa is the son of Caupolicán Ochoa, Rafael Correa’s lawyer, and was deputy minister between March and June 2014, in the management of Ledy Zúñiga, denied that he had asked to remove parts of the report.
The expert signed on September 2, 2013 the “record of delivery and single receipt” of the contract. So he says he does not understand why six months later they kept asking him for changes and “mutilations”. (I)
