Story By: Jonathan Macias, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
This is the former Mexican guerrilla soldier who has been sentenced to 60 years in prison for kidnapping a French-American woman and cutting off her finger for ransom.
Chilean national Raul Escobar Poblete, also known as ‘Comandante Emilio’ (Commander Emilio) was sentenced by the Tenth Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the State of Guanajuato, in Mexico. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison for aggravated kidnapping.
Poblete kidnapped a French-American named in reports as Nancy woman on 13th March 2017 in the city of San Miguel de Allende in Guanajuato and kept her captive for several months while demanding a ransom from her family.
Local media report a taxi driver told local authorities he had picked up a suspicious man who was carrying a small box with him and it was later discovered that Poblete had been carrying a finger that belonged to the kidnapped woman which he was going to use to extort the family. He had reportedly cut the victim’s finger off.
The criminal was arrested on the 30th of May 2017 by the Local Police of San Miguel de Allende, where the criminal lived for ten years using the false name Ramon Guerra Valencia.
The investigation that led to his arrest was conducted by the Unit Specialised in Combat Abduction (UECS).
It is unclear what happened to the victim after the criminal’s arrest.
Escobar, who was a Guerrilla soldier during the rule of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet between 1973 and 1990, reportedly passed himself off as a photographer and even belonged to a parents’ association in a local school in San Miguel de Allende.
He is now in the maximum-security prison of Ocampo in the state of Guanajuato and Chile’s government might ask for his repatriation to be judged for terrorism in his country of origin.
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