“I have asked the Attorney General’s Office to disclose whether Mrs. Diana Salazar is in the country, under what license or permit would she be absent? and who is prosecuting the cases that were under her charge?”, Aguirre indicated.
The request follows the refusal by prosecutor in charge, Wilson Toainga, to attend the parliamentary meeting that deals with the leak of messages from the assassinated presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, which reveal corruption plots involving Salazar.
Toainga excused himself from attending the National Assembly (Parliament) due to the confidentiality of the case and warned that the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code establishes prison sentences of one to three years for those who divulge restricted information.
On Thursday, Salazar spoke out through social media and said that Aguirre’s true intention is to find out his whereabouts. “Since when is that important to public opinion?” questioned the prosecutor, who added that this is only the interest of “the criminal structures that want to end my life and that of my family.”
According to the official, she faces “complex criminal structures” and said that the request for her appearance coincide with her 40th week of pregnancy.
The Prosecutor’s Office has not specified how long Diana Salazar’s leave will last, nor has it given additional details about her health status.
Last November, two Ecuadorian lawyers released around five thousand conversations extracted from Villavicencio’s cell phone, after he was murdered in the middle of the 2023 election campaign.
These messages would reveal, for example, that the prosecutor shared sensitive information with the politician.
They would also show that the Prosecutor’s Office, led by Salazar, mounted a case against former Ombudsman Freddy Carrión, who was formally accused of sexual abuse, but he was arrested only after reporting crimes against humanity during the protests of 2019.
Villavicencio was shot dead on August 9, 2023 as he was leaving a campaign rally in Quito, just 11 days before the first round of the early presidential elections.
ied/lam/avr
