Paraguay politician killed as helicopter crashes

Reuters/Asuncion

Paraguayan presidential candidate Lino Oviedo, who helped lead the 1989 coup that overthrew dictator Alfredo Stroessner, died in a helicopter crash over the weekend.

A retired general known as a dynamic public speaker, the 69-year-old Oviedo was running in the April presidential election in the landlocked, grains-exporting South American country.

Police rescuers found his body yesterday in the wreckage of a helicopter crash in northern Paraguay where he was traveling for a campaign event.

Yesterday marked exactly 24 years since the coup that ended Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship.

Oviedo’s popularity was based on the story - often repeated by his supporters but never independently verified - of him breaking into Stroessner’s bunker with a grenade in his hand to force the dictator to surrender.

Polls showed he was in fourth or fifth place, with 8% support, going into the April election.

“On behalf of the government, we send our sincere condolences to the family of general Lino Cesar Oviedo,” Paraguayan President Federico Franco said in a Tweet.

The government decreed three days of mourning and suspended all official activities.