More than 2,250 police officers have been deployed in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz as part of an international manhunt for a suspected drug smuggler.
Sebastián Marset, 32, is accused of trafficking tonnes of cocaine from South America to Europe.
He has also been accused of ordering the murder of an anti-drug prosecutor who was shot dead while on honeymoon in Colombia in 2022.
He is wanted by police in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and the US.
Sebastián Marset, a Uruguayan national, has been on the run from police since 2022.
Police tracked him and his family down to a luxurious home in Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s most populous city and the country’s economic centre on Saturday but he managed to elude capture.
Police Commander Yumor Justo Condori said Mr Marset’s bodyguards had taken a police officer hostage who was trying to detain him. The officer was later released.
Mr Marset is believed to have fled by car along with his wife and their three children to neighbouring Cochabamba province.
Thousands of officers have been deployed to catch him and eight properties in Santa Cruz were searched on Sunday, Bolivian officials say. Officers found 17 rifles, a pistol and bulletproof vests.
Sebastián Marset is accused of leading an international drugs cartel, known as PCU or First Uruguayan Cartel, which smuggles cocaine from Paraguay through Uruguay to Europe.
He has a long history of evading capture. Mr Marset was first jailed in 2013 for smuggling marijuana and weapons into Uruguay.
After his release in 2018, he appears to have relocated to neighbouring Paraguay from where he is thought to have travelled extensively using false identities.
In 2021, he was briefly arrested at Dubai airport, in the United Arab Emirates, for using a forged Paraguayan passport but released after he obtained official documents from the Uruguayan authorities.
An investigation is under way in Uruguay to determine how he came to be issued with a new passport when he was already under investigation in multiple countries.
His name hit the news again in August 2022 when Colombian President Gustavo Petro named Mr Marset as the man suspected of ordering the killing of Marcelo Pecci, a Paraguayan anti-crime prosecutor killed while on honeymoon in Colombia.
Pecci played a key part in “A Ultranza Py,”, the biggest operation against cocaine trafficking and money laundering in Paraguay’s history. Prosecutors say he was killed in revenge for dismantling the lucrative criminal business.
Bolivian authorities say Sebastián Marset entered their country shortly after he had been named as the man suspected of paying Marcelo Pecci’s killers.
Sebastián Marset reportedly led a luxury lifestyle in Bolivia, spending vast amounts of money buying property and even a second-division football club.
Mr Marset has sent a video to the media in which he thanks Bolivian police for allegedly giving him prior warning of an attempt to arrest him.
Bolivian police have denied tipping him off and continue to search for him.
The video recorded by the fugitive appears to try to exonerate those who have been arrested.
“I don’t implicate people who are innocent. None of these people who are in trouble have anything to do with my business, and they’re going down the drain because of this,” he says after briefly looking at the camera before pointing it at the sky above him.
“They’re linking people everywhere [to the case against me] who have nothing to do with me.”
He then proceeds to thank “the director of the Felcn (Bolivia’s Special Force against Drug Trafficking)”, whom he credits with helping him elude arrest.
“I managed to get away, because he warned me that the minister had issued an arrest warrant for me. And well, I grabbed some money, and he told me [it was time] to leave.”
The director of the Felcn, Ismael Villca, has vehemently denied tipping off Mr Marset.
“I won’t allow my career of 30 years to be sullied by the lies and statements of a drug trafficker,” Mr Villca said, adding that the police had acted “impeccably”.
The hunt for Mr Marset is being closely watched by the US Drug Enforcement Administration and in South American countries where he allegedly engaged in drug smuggling.
Source: bbc.co.uk
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