“I want to kill the president”: Man who threatened Luis Lacalle Pou arrested in Uruguay

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Uruguay’s Interior Ministry reported on Sunday that police officers arrested on Saturday a man who threatened to “kill” President Luis Lacalle Pou. “We report that a man was arrested who in some videos that went viral today threatens the president of the republic,” the Ministry posted on Twitter.

The body added that once “placed at the disposal of the prosecutor’s office,” prosecutor Ana Valverdú ordered the individual, whose identity she did not disclose, to appear before her on Monday, when she is to decide whether or not to indict him.

“I wanted to leave a clear message and for it to go viral: I want to kill the president,” the man said in one of the videos, identifying himself as Agustín Cabrera, according to the Uruguayan newspaper El Observador.

In another video he claimed that his message was intended to support 3 organizers of a recent anti-vaccine demonstration in Maldonado who were charged with “aggravated contempt” and banned from leaving the country for 90 days: Javier Sciuto, Fernando Vega and Fernando Ferreira.

These messages were in response to journalist Esteban Queimada, who urged people to post videos against the anti-vaccine protest, and to whom he asked in one of the recordings: “Who are you to tell me when I have to go out, with whom, until what time, what I have to do?”

This protest took place last week in the San Fernando square in Maldonado. The demonstrators were notified by the authorities that they would need to stop the crowding due to health regulations. However, as they continued with the demonstration, the police intervened.

Juan Torres, member of the “Por la verdad” organization, told local newspaper El País that “it is not about being against the virus, but rather against the legal health regulations which they are trying to impose through systematic vaccination.”

State-owned Radio Uruguay reported that once the video with the threat had gone viral, the subject released another recording in which he explained that his threats were not directed at the President of the Republic, Luis Lacalle Pou, but referred to a video game.

Amid these “anti-vaccine” protests, 1,125,379 people have been inoculated with the first dose of the Chinese Sinovac, the Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca or the American Pfizer and 479,089 with the second dose of Pfizer or Sinovac. So far, 32.13% of the population has received the first dose and 13.66% the second.

On Sunday, Uruguay registered 2,549 cases of Covid-19 and 43 deaths, according to the daily report by the National Emergency System (SINAE).

Since the health emergency was declared on March 13th, 2020, Uruguay records a total of 184,865 infections, of which 28,050 are currently active and 531 of them in Intensive Care.

All of the country’s departments are in the red zone according to the Harvard University index, having accumulated over 25 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the past seven days.

The worst department is Río Negro (east) with 135.76 cases, followed by Artigas (north) with 115.71, while the whole country registers an index of 82.25.

Source: Infobae