Paraguay probes murder of drug lord’s attorney

Paraguayan Interior Minister Juan Ernesto Villamayor said Tuesday that authorities are not ruling out any theories concerning the murder of an attorney representing reputed Brazilian drug kingpin Jarvis Chimenes Pavao.

“We cannot know if it’s an internal issue of a (drug trafficking) group or if it’s a group-versus-group issue,” he told reporters, adding that the Attorney General’s Office is taking a role in the investigation of Laura Casuso’s murder.

Casuso died Monday night after being shot 10 times by a hooded assailant in Pedro Juan Caballero, Amambay province, bordering Brazil.

Villamayor referred to Amambay as a place where “there are ongoing clashes between two large Brazilian groups seeking to control drug trafficking in the area.”

Thus, he insisted that it was still too early to establish who was responsible for the murder.

At the same time, he noted that the lawyer represented “two confessed drug traffickers,” so the murder “has an obvious relation to drug trafficking.”

Pavao was extradited to Brazil last December after spending eight years in a Paraguayan prison. He is now serving a 17-year sentence in his homeland for money laundering, drug trafficking and criminal conspiracy.

Casuso, who resided in Brazil, arrived in Paraguay a few days ago.

The lawyer also represented convicted Brazilian crime boss Marcelo Pinheiro, who has been imprisoned in Paraguay since last December.

Pinheiro was arrested in the southern Paraguayan city of Encarnacion 10 years after he broke out of a Brazilian prison.