Some 4,000 soldiers and police officers from Ecuador today entered the jail where “Fito” was being held, the leader of the most powerful gang in the country and whom assassinated presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio had accused of having threatened him, to transfer him to a maximum prison. security, a week before the holding of the presidential elections.
“This morning, pursuant to Decree 823, the transfer of alias Fito to the La Roca prison for the safety of citizens and detainees has been carried out. Ecuador will recover peace and security. Should violent reactions be generated , we will act with all the force of the State”, published President Guillermo Lasso on the social network X (former Twitter).
“Good job Armed Forces, Police and National Service for Comprehensive Care for Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders (SNAI),” added the Ecuadorian president.
The troops entered the Guayaquil Zonal Deprivation Center Number 8, in southwestern Ecuador, at dawn, heavily armed and in armored military vehicles, where José Adolfo Macías, head of the Los Choneros criminal group, was located.
In images shared on social networks by the security forces, a fat and bearded man is seen, which SNAI identified with “Fito”, confined there since 2011, reported the AFP news agency.
In one photograph he appears in front with his hands above his head and in others lying on the ground with his arms tied and in his underwear, along with dozens of prisoners.
According to the SNAI, the operation “was carried out with the aim of intervening in the minimum, medium and maximum security pavilions” of the penitentiary, as provided for by a state of exception in the country’s prisons that began at the end of July after a massacre.
During the operation, the military took the prisoners out to the patios and searched the cells, in which weapons, ammunition, drugs and cell phones were seized, among other prohibited objects, indicated the Primicias site.
The name “Fito” became media in Ecuador since last Wednesday, after the shooting of the presidential candidate of the center Villavicencio in Quito.
Villavicencio was one of the eight presidential candidates and was running second or third, according to the polls, which show the correísta Luisa González as a favorite.
The 59-year-old politician had denounced a week ago that the gang leader had threatened to kill him.
One of the warnings, he said, came to him through a political ally in the coastal province of Manabí, where the town of Chone is located, where the gang was born.
“It was to tell me that if I keep mentioning Los Choneros, they are going to break (murder) me,” Villavicencio told the Vis a Vis program.
“Fito” was sentenced to 34 years in prison for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.
The authorities have not yet clarified who paid the hit men who killed Villavicencio. Six Colombians have been detained in the case, while a seventh died in a crossfire with the candidate’s guards.
Lasso limited himself to saying that Villavicencio was a victim of organized crime.
The prisons have become the center of drug operations in Ecuador, which is experiencing a serious security crisis.
Since 2021, more than 430 inmates have died violently, dozens of them dismembered and burned amid disputes between rival gangs.
Statistics for 2022 show 25 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in the country, but 2023 could end worse, because only in the first half of the year 74.7% more homicides were committed than in the first six months of last year.
In the midst of this growing scenario of violence, Ecuadorians will go to the polls on Sunday the 20th to elect whoever completes Lasso’s term until 2025, after the president appealed to the constitutional figure of “cross death”, to avoid being dismissed by Parliament on corruption charges.
Source: Ambito
