GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador — Authorities moved the chief of certainly one of Ecuador’s strongest gangs right into a maximum-security jail Saturday, three days after the assassination of a presidential candidate who had denounced threats from the dreaded legal.
President Guillermo Lasso mentioned the relocation of Los Choneros chief Adolfo Macías, alias “Fito,” was meant “for the protection of residents and detainees.”
The gang boss was moved out of a jail with lighter safety right into a maximum-security jail in the identical giant advanced of detention services within the port metropolis of Guayaquil.
“Ecuador will get well peace and safety,” Lasso tweeted. “If violent reactions come up, we’ll act with full pressure.”
About 4,000 troopers and law enforcement officials raided the jail the place Macías was being held Saturday and seized weapons, ammunition and explosives. Corrections officers launched photographs of the raid exhibiting a number of prisoners, together with Macías, who’s serving a 34-year sentence for drug trafficking, organized crime and murder.
Ecuador’s transformation into a significant drug trafficking hub and the following three-year surge of violence reached a brand new degree with Wednesday’s assassination of Fernando Villavicencio throughout a marketing campaign rally in Quito, the capital. The candidate, who was not a front-runner, was recognized for talking up in opposition to drug cartels.
Authorities haven’t disclosed a motive for the killing. An Ecuadorian choose on Friday ordered preventive detention for six Colombian males described by authorities as being suspected of involvement within the slaying.
Villavicencio, 59, was certainly one of eight registered candidates for the Aug. 20 presidential election. He had accused Los Choneros and Macías, whom he linked to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, of threatening him and his marketing campaign group days earlier than the assassination.
Villavicencio believed in style assist would hold him protected.
“You’re my bulletproof vest. I don’t want one. You’re a courageous individuals and I’m as courageous as you might be,” he mentioned at a public assembly within the metropolis of Chone, the center of Los Choneros territory. “Carry on the drug lords. Carry on the hitmen.”
Inside Minister Juan Zapata on Thursday described the assassination as a “political crime of a terrorist nature” geared toward sabotaging the election.
The snap election was referred to as after Lasso, a conservative former banker, dissolved the Nationwide Meeting by decree in Could, performing to keep away from being impeached over allegations that he didn’t intervene to finish a defective contract between the state-owned oil transport firm and a non-public tanker firm. Lasso is not working within the election.