Garcia. Personally intervened in investigation
צילום: רויטרס
Peru: Officers who solved Israeli's murder honored
Israeli ambassador, Peruvian interior minister visit city of Arequipa, present police officers who caught suspects in connection to rape, killing of journalist Tamar Shahak with merit certificates
Peruvian Interior Minister Luis Alva Castro and Israeli Ambassador to Peru Walid Mansour presented the police officers who solved the murder of Israeli tourist Tamar Shahak with merit certificates over the weekend.
The two officials visited the city of Arequipa along with the head of Peru's national police, Octavio Salazar, and met with the investigators.
The Israeli hiker's murder also shocked Peru's President Alan Garcia Perez, who personally intervened in the investigation in order to pressure the local police.
The investigators announced last week that they had managed to locate the three murder suspects, who used to pick up their victims in a car disguised as a taxi. The gang is believed to have committed two additional similar murders.
The ceremony was held according to Peru's official rituals and was attended by members of the criminal identification unit and the unit investigating severe crimes.
The ceremony (Photo: Foreign Ministry)
The Israeli ambassador ascribed the quick solving of the murder to the recent significant improvement in the relationship between the two countries. He added that President Garcia's announcement on the media that Peru "would do anything" to solve the murder stemmed "from the willingness to signal and express the improvement in the relations."
Mansour stressed that in Peru "there is a lot of crime and a lot of tourists – not just Israelis – but it's not common to see the president appear on the media after every such incident."
He added that the authorities' quick response to the murder may have been linked to the affair's timing, as an international conference attended by Latin American leaders is expected to take place in the country in November.
"Peru wants to signal to its neighbors that the country is safe and free of dangers. Therefore, the police are being extra careful in light of riots and severe crimes," Mansour said, estimating that the suspects' trial would be handled in a tough manner.
The 23-year-old Shahak, a journalist, was found strangled to death early May after having apparently been struck over the head with a blunt object and raped by more than one person, initial police reports determined.
Police were convinced, 66 days after the murder, that Shahak's death was linked to the murder of two other women in the area.
