In an operation by the Colombian Police, Naín Andrés Pérez Toncel, alias Naín or Bendito menor, one of the main leaders of the Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada (ACSN), an illegal armed group heir to paramilitarism operating in northern Colombia, was killed on Thursday night. In the operation, carried out in Riohacha, the capital of La Guajira, his partner, Rosa Angélica Tarazona, alias Bebecita, and two members of his command circle also died: alias El Tío, logistics leader, and alias Casiloco, responsible for the financial component.
Bendito Menor was on the list of main military targets of the Government of Abelardo de la Espriella, who confirmed his death through a statement from the Ministry of Defense, which assures that these casualties are the result of Operation Sentinel of the Homeland. In recent days, it had been speculated that Bendito Menor was dead, but that he had fallen at the hands of the Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra themselves, after he supposedly stopped appearing in the interceptions that the authorities were making of his communications. “We have three days without him appearing in the interceptions we have been carrying out in this area where he moves, and human sources told us that he was killed because he did not obey orders,” said an officer from the search team in an interview with Semana.
According to another local media outlet, EL TIEMPO, the operation was carried out thanks to intelligence information provided by the United States, which helped establish Pérez Toncel’s location; it also reported that U.S. agents were present hours earlier in Santa Marta, Cartagena, and Riohacha, cities where Bendito Menor coordinated drug trafficking and extortion activities. In the official statement, the Colombian Government does not mention U.S. collaboration and attributes the success of the operation to the National Police, a special command of the Criminal Investigation Directorate, and the Criminal Investigation Directorate (DIJIN), which in Colombia functions as the official headquarters of Interpol’s National Central Bureau: alias ‘Nain’ had a red notice from that organization. He also had five outstanding arrest warrants for aggravated homicide, kidnapping, extortion, and aggravated conspiracy to commit a crime.
Read more Train again with these white Adidas sneakers that go with any ‘look’ and cost 37% less
Bendito Menor was on the list of main military targets of President Abelardo de la Espriella, who ordered the Armed Forces to find his whereabouts as part of his commitment to capture or kill ten criminal leaders in his first 90 days as president. In the case of Bendito Menor, it took less than 30. Authorities determined that he was at his mother’s house, in the José Arnoldo Marín neighborhood, and deployed an operation by land and air. Several helicopters flew over the area, and at 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, special police units — the Special Operations Group (GOES) — raided the house in an operation that lasted several hours and ended with the death of the four people.
Alias Bendito Menor was commander of one of the four fronts of the ACSN, the Javier Cáceres substructure, which operated mainly in southern La Guajira. Although he was not the top leader of the organization, he became one of its most visible members due to his extravagant behavior and visibility on social media. In January of this year, after authorities linked him to a massacre that occurred in Maicao in which five people died, a video surfaced on Facebook in which the leader supposedly threatened then Colombian President Gustavo Petro: “We are going to chop you up and put you in one of those sugar bags,” said a man whose face was not visible. Later, Pérez Toncel himself denied it: “There are people threatening and impersonating me to damage my image with fake Facebook accounts,” he said. However, he was already on the authorities’ radar, who offered 1 billion pesos for information leading to his capture.