Former military man Francisco Luis Correa, a key witness in the Cartagena de Indias case, was found dead at dawn this Friday in his penitentiary cell, in the south of Bogotá. The National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (Inpec), in charge of the prison, has confirmed to this newspaper that he was murdered and has reported that it has identified another of the prisoners as the alleged aggressor. The Ministry of Justice, for its part, has confirmed the death, but has avoided giving further details. “Respectful of the investigation, we will wait for what emerges from it to be rigorous in determining the causes and the events that happened,” he stated in .
Correa had been accused of the crimes of homicide, manufacture and possession of firearms for the murder of the Paraguayan anti-corruption prosecutor, on a beach on the Barú peninsula, in the rural area of Cartagena. Criminal lawyer Francisco Bernate, legal representative of the Pecci family in Colombia, commented in a video that he released to the local press that Correa had provided important information to clarify the crime, as part of a judicial negotiation in which he had also accepted the charges. against him. “His collaboration with justice was practically finished and on January 19 he was going to receive a final sentence. He was going to be forgiven for the crime of homicide and he was only convicted of carrying weapons,” he declared.
Bernate has questioned Correa’s recent transfer from a high-security unit of the Prosecutor’s Office to La Picota, a prison in the south of the capital with 6,181 places and, having 7,321 inmates according to Inpec figures as of today. “We had warned the authorities of the danger of statements that were made on social networks regarding this person and no precautions were taken,” the lawyer highlighted in the video. Later, in statements to the Paraguayan radio Abc Cardinal, he indicated that others involved in the crime had made intimidating statements against Correa and that they put “a tombstone on his head.” Cecilia Pérez, lawyer in Paraguay for the prosecutor’s widow, commented something similar in statements reported by the newspaper. Abc Color: “It is revenge and a message for the future, more than an archive burning. The goal is to thwart future statements.”
Maricel Albertini, the mother of the murdered prosecutor, has also asked for explanations for Correa’s transfer to prison. “If he was a key person in all this, how come the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office did not take care of certain details?” he commented on W Radio. Journalist Julio Sánchez Cristo, for his part, has indicated that he has the version of an alleged “drinking fight” between fellow prison inmates. “The aggressor even held spontaneous demonstrations claiming responsibility,” he noted.
Colombian authorities have remained cautious. The Prosecutor’s Office has not responded to this newspaper’s queries regarding Bernate’s statements. Inpec, meanwhile, has commented that the investigation must still clarify the facts.
The Pecci case
It shocked Colombia and Paraguay. The lawyer was the specialized prosecutor against organized crime in the Southern Cone country. He was in charge of several of the most important drug trafficking and money laundering cases in a country that is used by organized crime bosses from neighboring Brazil and Argentina. He was on his honeymoon on the paradisiacal beaches of the Caribbean when some hitmen arrived on a jet ski and riddled him with bullets.
Correa, unlike other defendants, accepted his responsibility for having coordinated the murder, as an intermediary between the drug traffickers who orchestrated the crime and the hitmen who carried it out, and pointed out others involved. In May 2023, Ramón Emilio and Andrés Felipe Pérez Hoyos for their participation in the murder; They were the ones who hired Correa. Investigations had found that they used at least seven other people to carry out the crime: they provided them with supplies and met with the hitmen. In February 2024, a court in Cartagena convicted Andrés’ wife, Margareth Chacón, for also collaborating in the necessary logistics.
