Quito.- Six people were arrested during the night of this Wednesday, allegedly involved in the murder of the candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador Fernando Villavicencio, victim of an attack with shots at the exit of a rally of his electoral campaign in Quito.
The arrests were made during a series of raids carried out in Conocoto and San Bartolo, two neighborhoods in the Ecuadorian capital, as reported by the Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office through its official channels.
At the same time, the Prosecutor’s Office proceeded with the removal of Villavicencio’s body from the medical center where he had been transferred after the attack and sent it to a morgue for autopsy.
The Public Ministry also reported earlier the death of a crime suspect who was captured after a shootout with security personnel.
According to the same Prosecutor’s Office, which did not report the identity of the deceased, this alleged perpetrator of the attack was taken first to a Quito court and then to a medical center, on the way to which the fire brigade ambulance that was transporting him confirmed his death. .
As a result of the attack, at least nine other people were also injured and were also taken to a medical center, including a candidate for assembly and two police officers.
Villavicencio, 59, was one of eight registered candidates to succeed the current president, the conservative Guillermo Lasso, in the extraordinary general elections called for next Sunday, August 20, and like the rest, had been provided with a police guard.
The journalist and former assemblyman had denounced death threats against him weeks ago, in the midst of an electoral campaign that revolves around the worst security crisis plaguing Ecuador, which closed 2022 with a rate of 25.32 violent deaths for every 100,000 inhabitants, the highest since records have been kept.
This rise in homicides is mainly linked, according to the Government, to organized crime and drug trafficking, which in recent years has become strong in the country’s coastal zone, where it has turned Ecuadorian ports into large springboards for cocaine arriving to Europe and North America.
Villavicencio, who due to his journalistic revelations about corruption had become a staunch enemy of former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017), proposed a frontal fight against corruption and against the mafias that operate in Ecuador.
The assassination of the candidate has shocked Ecuador, plunged into deep consternation that has led some of his rivals to suspend their electoral campaigns.
