A 60-day state of emergency has begun in Ecuador after a convicted gang leader vanished from his prison cell.
Adolfo MacĂas Villamar, better known as “Fito”, is the leader of Los Choneros, a powerful gang which is thought to have been behind some of the deadly prison riots in recent months.
He was being held in the maximum security wing of a jail in Guayaquil.
The emergency measures include the suspension of the right of assembly and a nightly curfew.
They were announced in a decree issued by President Daniel Noboa, who took office less than two months ago as the second-youngest holder of the post in Ecuadorean history.
He won the election after a campaign overshadowed by unprecedented levels of violence, including the assassination of another candidate, Fernando Villavicencio.
President Noboa said the emergency would allow the military and police to take control of the country’s prisons at a national level. Los Choneros control much of the compound at La Regional prison, where Fito was being held.
“These narco-terrorist groups intend to intimidate us and they think we will give in to their demands,” the president said.
But he added: “We will not negotiate with terrorists and we will not rest until we have restored peace.”
Fito is a notorious criminal suspected of having played a role in last year’s killing of Villavicencio, whom he had sent death threats.
Police said they had noticed his absence early on Sunday and could not find him anywhere in the prison wing.
He often defies the authorities, most recently by releasing a “narcocorrido”, a slick music video glorifying his criminal exploits, which was partly recorded inside the jail.
The video shows the Mariachi Bravo duo singing along with Fito’s daughter, known as Queen Michelle, and praising the “man of honour” they say the criminal is.
“I take my hat off to you, Fito, my dad,” his daughter croons, claiming that “through his veins good blood flows”.
The video shows Fito caressing a fighting cockerel and freely chatting to fellow inmates.
The fact that the video could be recorded behind bars suggests that the ban on electronic devices inside the jail had been breached.
It is still not clear if Fito managed to leave the prison compound in the port city or if he may be hiding somewhere inside.
A police commander said he could “neither confirm nor deny” an escape, nor could he say for how long the convict had been missing.
He said hundreds of officers were searching the prison.
La Regional jail is located in a large prison compound which houses a total of five penitentiaries and more than 12,000 inmates. Fito has spent much of his past 12 years behind bars there.
In August, he was briefly transferred to La Roca, a smaller jail in the same compound, which is considered safer because of the lower number of inmates. It took thousands of soldiers to move him.
But the convict’s lawyer appealed against the decision to transfer him and won, and Fito was moved back to La Regional after just a month.
Fito has escaped from the prison compound before. In 2013, he and 17 other inmates broke out of La Roca and fled in boats on the River Daule, which borders the compound.
The fugitive was captured along with his brother, a fellow member of Los Choneros, four months later at their mother’s home in the city of Manta.
Fito has been in prison ever since. After the killing in December 2020 of Jorge Luis Zambrano, he took over the leadership of Los Choneros.
The gang, which is named after its power base in the town of Chone, mainly engages in drug trafficking and extortion and has forged links with Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel.
Ecuador: Gunmen storm television studio live on air
Following the State of emergency being declared in Ecuador, masked gunmen broke into a live television studio in Ecuador and threatened terrified staff.
Employees were forced on to the floor during the broadcast by the public television channel TC in the city of Guayaquil before the live feed cut out.
Police say they later freed all the staff and made 13 arrests. The station said two employees were injured.
At least 10 people have been killed since a 60-day state of emergency began in Ecuador on Monday.
The emergency was declared after a notorious gangster vanished from his prison cell. It is unclear whether the incident at the TV studio in Guayaquil was related to the disappearance from a prison in the same city of the boss of the Choneros gang, Adolfo MacĂas Villamar, or Fito as he is better known.
In neighbouring Peru, the government ordered the immediate deployment of a police force to the border to prevent any instability crossing into the country.
The US has said it condemns the “brazen attacks” in Ecuador and is “co-ordinating closely” with President Daniel Noboa and his Ecuadorean government and stands “ready to provide assistance”.
Ecuador is one of the world’s top banana exporters, but also exports oil, coffee, cocoa, shrimps and fish products. A surge in violence in the Andean nation, inside and outside its prisons, has been linked to fighting between drug cartels, both foreign and local, over control of cocaine routes to the US and Europe.
During Tuesday’s assault at the TV station, one gunman pointed a pump-action shotgun at the head of one of the captives, who was also threatened with a revolver.
A woman could be heard pleading, “Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot,” AFP news agency reports, while a person could be heard screaming in apparent pain.
“Please, they came in to kill us,” a TC employee told AFP in a WhatsApp message. “God don’t let this happen. The criminals are on air.”
One cameraman was shot in the leg, and another’s arm was broken in the attack, the deputy director of news said.
“Through our earpieces the producers told us, ‘Be careful, they are trying to enter, they are stealing, they are mugging us’,” Jorge Rendon told the Reuters news agency.
“The doors in the studio are very thick, almost bullet-proofed, and they were trying to get in because they wanted to gain access to the studio so we would say whatever they wanted us to say,” he said.
Posting video of the suspects arrested on social media – and their weapons – police said the perpetrators would be “punished for terrorist acts”.
President Noboa said on Tuesday that an “internal armed conflict” now existed in the country and he was mobilising the armed forces to carry out “military operations to neutralise” what he called “transnational organised crime, terrorist organisations and belligerent non-state actors”.
He was responding to a wave of recent jail riots and escapes from prisons and other acts of violence blamed by authorities on criminal gangs.
His decree listed the Choneros (named after the town of Chone in Manabi Province) as well as 21 other gangs: the Aguilas, AguilasKiller, AK-47, Caballeros Oscuros, ChoneKiller, Covicheros, Cuartel de las Feas, Cubanos, Fatales, Ganster, Kater Piler, Lagartos, Latin Kings, Lobos, Los p.27, Los Tiburones, Mafia 18, Mafia Trebol, Patrones, R7 and Tiguerones.
The order built on the state of emergency declared on Monday, which ordains a nightly curfew in an attempt to curb violence following Fito’s escape. Security forces have been trying to re-establish order in at least six jails where riots broke out on Monday.
Eight people were killed and three injured in attacks linked to criminal gangs in Guayaquil on Tuesday while two police officers were killed by “armed criminals” in the nearby town of Nobol, police said.
In the city of Riobamba, nearly 40 inmates, including another convicted drug lord, broke out of a prison.
At least seven police officers were also kidnapped and a video circulating on social media shows three of the kidnapped officers sitting on the ground with a gun pointed at them as one is forced to read a statement addressed to President Noboa, AFP reports.
“You declared war, you will get war,” the officer reads out. “You declared a state of emergency. We declare police, civilians and soldiers to be the spoils of war.”
Police have ordered the evacuation of the government compound in Quito over security concerns,
Quito residents told Reuters news agency the city was in chaos since news of the attack at the TV station in Guayaquil.
“There’s too much nervousness in the city,” said Mario Urena. “At work, people are leaving earlier. All the people are leaving, you see a lot of traffic and alarms everywhere. There’s a chaos.”
Other people in the city of Cuenca told AFP of their shock at seeing the TV station seized.
“In Ecuador, we have never seen this kind of thing, where a channel has been practically hijacked and a broadcast starts with shootings, with kidnappings,” said Francisco Rosas. “So what kind of security situation are we in? And if a television station is capable of receiving this type of robbery, this type of insecurity, imagine restaurants or shops.”
In recent years, the country’s prisons have been plagued by violent feuds between jailed members of rival gangs, often resulting in multiple massacres of inmates.
The Choneros are a powerful prison gang thought to be behind many of the deadly riots and prison fights which have erupted in Ecuador’s jails over recent years.
Fito is thought to have absconded just hours before his planned transfer. Two prison guards have been detained on suspicion of helping him escape.
His escape is also a blow to the government of President Noboa, who was sworn in in November after winning an election tarnished by the assassination of presidential candidate and journalist Fernando Villavicencio.
Villavicencio had reported receiving death threats from Fito just days before he was shot dead while leaving a campaign rally in Quito.
Source: bbc.co.uk
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