SANTO DOMINGO.- The Presidency’s narcotics adviser Marino Vinicio Castillo said Monday that senior military and police officials are involved in the case of the Bani bloodbath, where seven narcotics suspects were gunned down gangland style, and despite his repeated warnings president Leonel Fernandez’s Administration hasn’t done enough on the war on drugs.

He said there are “too many coincidences” in the Bani case, and subsequent arrests that appeared unrelated show the involvement of military officers in the case authorities say involved 1,200 kilos of cocaine.

The official said when questioned by investigators, the maid who worked in the house of the seven killed said the suspected murderers came to house and were let in by a Colombian allegedly head of the group, prior to his execution in a cane field near the village Ojo de Agua. “The fact they arrived in the house at Paya and those inside let them in shows that it was a normal operation of seizure by the authorities, until the decision was made to kill them.”

He also cites a call by the contingent of the Drugs Control Agency at Barahona (southwest) the night before the killings which he says couldn’t also be a coincidence, because it would’ve been a way to pull the agents away from Bani to facilitate the movement of the cocaine. “The officer in charge of boat operations in Salinas was also recently arrested with cocaine,” he said in reference to another nearby town of Peravia province.

Castillo warned that drug trafficking has “permeated” the highest echelons of the military and police, and that despite his “repeated” warning to Fernandez of the situation, enough hasn’t been done.  “I’ve told president Fernandez many times that this situation brings decay, but the government hasn’t done enough to confront the situation.”

However, he said Fernandez has had to face the “titanic” task of reverting the legacy of former president Hipolito Mejia’s “unpardonable permissiveness” with drug traffickers. “Let’s don’t forget that Quirino’s (Paulino) helicopter slept right next to his in the hangar at San Isidro Air Force Base,” in reference to the defendant in the case of the 1,387 kilos now awaiting trial in New York.

Castillo, interviewed by Cesar Medina on Channel 9, asked “what’s happening in Bani?” and said it’s also suspicious that upon questioning, Holi Gomez, the Nicaraguan who survived the massacre asked the interrogators “Are you the good guys of the bad guys?”

He called for a cleanup of the entire Armed Forces and National Police because “they are the ones with the weapons, and not the sergeant of the recruit, but from the very top.”

The official also criticized those who say there’s too much red tape for foreigners to acquire properties, noting that it’s a type of control used in many countries to thwart money laundering.

The murder of the Civil Aviation official

He said drug trafficking has become such a force that the murder of Civil Aviation official Angel Christopher Martinez has yet to be solved. “That was an easy crime to investigate, because you only had to look to the people in the airlines with which had had conflicts.”

Martinez’s murder took place after he reportedly grounded planes suspected of being used for drug trafficking. “That investigation has been very deficient, it sends a message to the government employee: ‘don’t get into that, it’s too dangerous.”