SANTIAGO — Chile’s Public Prosecutor’s Office has formally concluded that Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s Interior Minister and one of Chavismo’s most powerful figures, ordered and financed the 2024 kidnapping and murder of Venezuelan dissident Ronald Ojeda in Santiago — a case prosecutors now say they would arrest Cabello for on the spot if he ever set foot in Chile.
Who Ronald Ojeda Was, and How He Died
Ojeda, a former Venezuelan army lieutenant who had defected and become a vocal dissident against Nicolás Maduro’s government, was living in exile in the capital city of Santiago when he was kidnapped from his apartment on February 21, 2024, by men posing as Chilean immigration police.
Ojeda’s body was found days later, buried beneath a layer of cement. Chilean investigators say Ojeda had participated in two coup attempts against Maduro, the most recent just two months before his killing, in December 2023 — and that his activism against the Venezuelan government was the direct motive for his assassination, making the case, in the Prosecutor’s Office’s own characterization, one of political persecution with diplomatic implications rather than an ordinary homicide.
What Chilean Prosecutors Now Say
Héctor Barros Vásquez, Chile’s Metropolitan South Regional Prosecutor, has led the two-year investigation and has grown increasingly direct in his public statements as the case has developed.
“What we have established is that the one responsible for the negotiation is Diosdado Cabello, and who would be behind the payment,” Barros said, as reported by Noticias Caracol.
On September 1, Barros went further, telling Chilean broadcaster 24 Horas:
“We are going to pursue everyone who bears responsibility, and believe me, if Diosdado Cabello were in Chile, most likely he would have had an arrest warrant issued against him.”
Chile’s investigation, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, established that Cabello contracted Tren de Aragua — the Venezuelan gang the United States has separately designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization — to carry out the kidnapping and killing, using funds paid from outside both Venezuela and Chile in what prosecutors describe as a highly sophisticated logistical operation never before seen in the country: extraction, execution, death, illegal burial, and an attempted disappearance of the body.
Barros addressed directly whether Maduro himself was aware of the operation, offering a carefully hedged answer: “It’s quite difficult, if you theorize it that way, that he wouldn’t have known.” He clarified, however, that the Prosecutor’s Office must act strictly on the evidence incorporated into the investigation, and that for now, the investigative line extends only as far as Cabello.
Possible Charges
The accusations against Cabello are surfacing publicly just as Chile prepares to begin formal trials against 34 members of the Tren de Aragua structure allegedly involved in the operation.
Juan Carlos Manríquez, the attorney representing Ojeda’s family, has advanced a parallel and consistent theory to that of prosecutors, describing the criminal structure as having been “cooptada,” negotiated, and ultimately used as genuine criminal outsourcing — funded with money from Venezuela that, according to three people involved in the investigation, was paid by Cabello.
Separately, Maickel Villegas, who investigators say recorded the assassination to deliver it “a los jefes” — to the bosses — was previously extradited to face charges in the case.
Chilean officials have signaled the case could extend beyond domestic prosecution. Interior Minister Carolina Tohá said previously that if the allegations against Cabello are confirmed, Chile would consider pursuing the matter through the International Criminal Court — a course of action that would elevate the case from a domestic murder investigation to an international accountability question involving a sitting senior official of a foreign government.
Separate reporting has indicated Chilean prosecutors could seek Cabello’s extradition, though no formal extradition request has been publicly confirmed as of this writing.
A Case With Deep Political Stakes
The investigation lands amid an already fraught period for Cabello internationally. He remains the subject of a $25 million U.S. bounty tied to separate narco-trafficking allegations, and continues to serve in his current post as Venezuela’s Interior Minister despite that international legal exposure — even as he has separately, and publicly, denied that prisoner releases in Venezuela are connected to the country’s ongoing U.S.-brokered political dialogue, a position we’ve covered previously.
The Ojeda case adds a distinct and separate line of accusation: not financial crime, but the direct ordering of a political assassination carried out on foreign soil against a dissident of Maduro’s government.
With the trial of 34 Tren de Aragua members now beginning in Chilean courts and prosecutors continuing to formalize charges against additional suspects — including a recent hearing that resulted in pretrial detention for two newly charged individuals — the case against Cabello himself remains, for now, a matter of Chilean investigative conclusion rather than a formal international indictment or extradition proceeding.
But whether Chile ultimately pursues the ICC route Tohá has floated, or whether the case remains confined to prosecuting the Tren de Aragua members already in Chilean custody, will likely become clearer as the domestic trial proceeds in the coming months.
