More confusion surrounding the authorship of the assassination of the candidate for the presidency of Ecuador, Fernando Villavicencio.
Shortly after the assassination of the politician in a shootout on Thursday, alleged members of the Los Lobos criminal group They claimed responsibility with a video where they appeared with balaclavas, dressed in black and heavily armed, and threatened with new assassinations of politicians.
Now another video has appeared where another group of people, this time with their faces uncovered, claim to be the true members of Los Lobos and they assure that the group is not responsible for the crime.
“Ecuador, do not be fooled. We are the GDO (organized crime group) The Wolveswe do not cover our faces, nobody speaks for us and we do comply with peace, “says a man in the video, of unknown origin, in which he appears surrounded by several men dressed in white.
“We make it clear that we have never murdered people from the government or civilians and we clarify that the video circulating on social mediain which a group of people with their faces covered, with assault rifles, posing as members of our organization, is totally false,” they pointed out.
The person who acts as a spokesperson in the video assures that none of those who appear in the video that circulated on Wednesday night belong to Los Lobos and points out that with this “it is clear that other criminal groups want to destabilize the country, and hold others responsible GDO, like ours, The Wolvesof the tragedy that is happening right now” in Ecuador.
He appealed to the authorities to “investigate and find the real culprits and not be fooled by people who make videos, covering their faces so as not to take responsibility for their actions, who violate the state security in citizenship.”
Until now, no authority has referred to the dissemination of these videos, which at the moment do not have a clear origin of the way in which they began to be disseminated through instant messaging groups and social networks.
six arrested
As a result of the attack, six people have been detained in various raids in QuitoAlthough the authorities have not indicated whether the people arrested are members of Los Lobos.
Los Lobos is one of the largest criminal gangs operating in Ecuador and one of the causes of the security crisis that the country is going through, as well as the series of prison massacres where more than 400 prisoners have been murdered since 2020 in clashes between criminal groups, which dispute internal control of Ecuador’s prisons .
The Wolvesas well as other organized crime gangs that operate in Ecuador such as The Tiguerones either The ChonerosAmong their illicit businesses, mainly drug trafficking and extortion, according to the authorities.
The bulk of this criminal violence occurs mainly on the coast of Ecuadorthrough which one of the main drug trafficking routes passes, which has made Ecuadorian ports great springboards to send large quantities of cocaine to Europe and the United States through maritime trade.
The increase in homicides made Ecuador break the record for violent deaths in 2022 with a rate of 25.32 per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest in its history.
