ASUNCION, Paraguay, Aug 20, (AP): A pre-dawn police raid targeting the home of a Paraguayan lawmaker in a notorious drug smuggling haven near the country's border with Brazil turned into a chaotic shootout on Monday, authorities said, leaving the lawmaker dead and the nation on edge.
The killing of Eulalio "Lalo” Gomes, a 67-year-old rancher and lawmaker from Paraguay’s long-ruling Colorado party, also served as a grim reminder of the web of collusion between politicians' families and organized crime in Paraguay, experts said.
"This is not an isolated case, on the contrary, it's the continuation of many other cases linking politics to narco-trafficking and organized crime,” said Paraguayan lawyer and political analyst Leonardo Gómez Berniga.
Security forces equipped with firearms and search warrants arrived simultaneously at the separate homes of Gomes and his son, 32-year-old Alexandre Rodrigues Gomes, early Monday in the lush borderland to look for evidence in what authorities described as a wide-scale investigation into drug smuggling and money laundering in local real estate.
Officers said Gomes greeted them with a hail of gunfire. Police fired back, fatally wounding the conservative Colorado lawmaker.
"We have a community in turmoil, a public who needs answers,” Emiliano Rolón, Paraguay's public prosecutor, said as he emerged from the morgue of Asunción, Paraguay's steamy capital city some 276 miles (445 kilometers) southwest of Pedro Juan Caballero, the border outpost where the raid took place. "We're dealing with organized crime, and that's not an easy thing.”
Rolón said his office had issued an indictment just before Monday's raid charging Gomes and his son, along with three other suspects, in the trafficking scheme that entangles the gang of a prominent Brazilian cocaine kingpin imprisoned across the porous border.