Quito.- A commission from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrived in Ecuador to coordinate support for the investigations into the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, killed by hitmen last Wednesday after leading a political rally in Quito.
This was announced by the Minister of the Interior, Juan Zapata, at a press conference in which he gave details of the progress of the investigation into the murder of the candidate, one of the eight who had registered for the elections next Sunday 20 of August.
The FBI commission “has made contact with the national Police” and in the next few hours a “tripartite” meeting will be held with the State Attorney General’s Office, which is the head of the investigation in the case, Zapata said.
The minister added that this meeting will determine “the scope of collaboration and support” that the FBI will give in the investigation of the crime, whose participation was requested by the Ecuadorian president himself, the conservative Guillermo Lasso.
Zapata announced that, if the Prosecutor’s Office so defines it, the FBI could support the “exploitation” or extraction of the information contained in several mobile phones seized during the first police actions after the shooting against the presidential candidate.
IN COMMUNICATION WITH COLOMBIA
The minister also did not rule out the possibility of requesting collaboration from other foreign organizations, such as the Colombian Police, since the six suspects arrested for the crime are of that nationality.
In fact, the Colombian authorities have delivered to the Ecuadorian information related to the six detainees, as well as another subject of that nationality who was killed after the shooting and who is accused of executing the shots against Villavicencio.
“International collaboration is never ruled out” and even more so with Colombia, with which there is close cooperation for sharing a border, Zapata added.
In this regard, the General Commander of the Police, Fausto Salinas, who accompanied Zapata at the press conference, recalled that after the crime in Villavicencio, at the end of last Wednesday afternoon, he coordinated with the neighboring authorities to warn them of the eventual passage of a suspicious person from Ecuador.
BACKGROUND OF SUSPECTS
He also said that, in coordination with Interpol of Colombia, it was possible to obtain the background files of the detained suspects.
Zapata and Salinas, who attended the press conference accompanied by other senior police officers, remarked that the information they provide is what can be taken officially, because, according to what they said, false news about the case.
They also did not want to comment on hypotheses, expert analysis or the doubts that have arisen about the murder of Villavicencio, which occurred when he had special police protection.
What Zapata did highlight is the “speed” with which the Police acted to arrest the material suspects of the crime and raise the evidence that led the Justice to order their preventive detention.
IN SEARCH OF INTELLECTUAL AUTHORS
The minister said that the first step has been taken, with the arrest of the material suspects of the crime, but he said that the commitment is to find the masterminds or others who may appear in the investigation.
The arrival of an FBI mission in Ecuador, at the request of President Lasso, took place the same day as the armed attack, when the United States ambassador to Ecuador, Michael J. Fitzpatrick, offered “urgent investigative assistance.”
For a little over two years, murders by hitmen and massacres by organized crime groups, which the government links to international drug trafficking gangs, have increased in Ecuador.
The extraordinary elections next Sunday were called after Lasso decreed last May the so-called “cross death”, a constitutional mechanism with which he dissolved the National Assembly (Parliament), with an opposition majority, when he was preparing to vote for his dismissal.
