MONTEVIDEO, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) — Uruguay President Luis Lacalle Pou today ruled out that the government negotiated with drug trafficker Sebastián Marset to hand him over to Uruguayan authorities, something the fugitive criminal had suggested in a journalist’s interview .
“The government, through its ministries, in this case the Interior and Foreign Affairs ministries, generated the warnings that had to be generated,” Lacalle told reporters about the issuance of the passport to Marset, a controversy that led to the removal of the passport in early November led, among others, Interior Minister and Federal Chancellor.
“The government does not negotiate with drug traffickers, that is crystal clear, it should not even have to be said,” the president said this evening in a press conference after an activity in the department of Rocha (East).
Lacalle said he trusts that “the coordination of the different police forces” in the region “will be effective” in arresting the Uruguayan drug trafficker, who was identified in Bolivia in July, although he managed to escape with his family.
Previously, the Attorney General’s Office refused to seek an agreement with Marset because, according to prosecutor Juan Gómez, Uruguay would fulfill its “obligations” if there were requests for the extradition of a person and “much more than just a drug trafficker.”
Marset gave an interview to a Channel 4 journalist from Montevideo at an undisclosed location in which he expressed his willingness to surrender before the Uruguayan judiciary if they assured him that he would not be extradited to Paraguay or Bolivia.
The Uruguayan government argues that the issuance of the passport to Marset in 2021, when he was imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates, occurred when “there was no international requirement” and there was no legal impediment to its issuance. End