QUITO, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Six prisoners who were killed on Friday in a prison in Ecuador’s Guayas province were involved in the murder of anti-corruption presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, the prison agency said.
Villavicencio was shot dead while leaving an election campaign rally days before the first round in August, amid a wave of violence that outgoing president Guillermo Lasso attributes to the dispute between gangs related to drug trafficking.
On the night of the murder, the police detained six people of Colombian nationality for investigation, while another died in the confrontation and the prosecutor’s office later linked new suspects to the case.
Friday’s incident occurred in the prison known as Penitenciaria del Litoral, located in Guayaquil and considered one of the most dangerous in the country, where criminal gangs dispute control and power.
“All the PPL (persons deprived of liberty) are of Colombian nationality and were charged with the murder of former president Fernando Villavicencio,” the SNAI prison agency said in a statement.
Lasso quickly condemned the prisoners’ crime. “Neither complicity nor cover-up, the truth will be known here,” he said on platform X, formerly known as Twitter, when reporting that he arranged a meeting of the security cabinet.
The presidential candidates, businessman Daniel Noboa and leftist politician Luisa González, who will face each other in a runoff on October 15, condemned the death of the prisoners linked to the case.
“We demand that the National Government, on behalf of a majority of citizens who want change in search of better days, report the details of the events that occurred today,” said Noboa, who is leading the latest polls, in a statement. “How could we allow the empowerment of violence that has plunged the entire country into terror and uncertainty?”
For her part, Gónzalez, a protégé of former President Rafael Correa, wrote on Platform X that the reality of the country must be transformed and peace maintained “without allowing this clear strategy of terror to stop us.”
(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia. Editing by Javier Leira)
Source: Ambito
