Some 4,000 soldiers and police from Ecuador They entered the jail this Saturday where alias is being heldphyto‘, the leader of the most powerful gang in the country and whom the assassinated presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio accused of threatening him, authorities reported.
The uniformed men entered heavily armed and in armored military vehicles at dawn Zone Deprivation of Liberty Center Number 8 of Guayaquil (southwestern Ecuador), where it remains Jose Adolfo Maciashead of the criminal group ‘Los Choneros’.
In images shared on social networks by the public force, a fat and bearded man appears. The prison authority SNAI confirmed to afp that is ‘phyto‘, held there since 2011.
Adolfo Macías, alias Fito, leader of Los Choneros is transferred to The Rock maximum security complex inside the Guayaquil Penitentiary
In one photograph he appears in front with his hands above his head and in others lying on the ground with his arms tied and in his underwear, along with dozens of prisoners.
According to him SNAIthe operation “was carried out (…) with the aim of intervening in the minimum, medium and maximum security pavilions” of the penitentiary, as provided for by a state of exception in the country’s prisons that began at the end of July after a slaughter.
The name of ‘phyto‘ became media in Ecuador since Wednesday, after the shooting assassination of the centrist presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in Quitowho was second in the intention to vote according to a poll.
The 59-year-old politician had denounced a week ago that the gang leader had threatened to kill him.
One of the warnings, he said, came to him from a political ally in the coastal province of manabíwhere the town of Chone in which the band was born.
An “alias emissary” phyto» contacted him, explained Villavicencio. It was “to tell him that if I keep (…) mentioning Los Choneros, they are going to break (murder) me,” he told the Vis a Vis program.
‘phyto‘ was sentenced to 34 years in prison for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.
Former journalist and congressman, Villavicencio he became a nuisance to gangs and drug dealers for his investigations.
The authorities have not clarified who paid the hit men who shot him. Six Colombians have been detained in the case, while a seventh died in a crossfire with the candidate’s guards.
President William Lasso just said that Villavicencio He was a victim of organized crime.
The prisons became the center of drug operations in Ecuador. Since 2021, more than 430 inmates have died violently, dozens of them dismembered and cremated amid disputes between rival gangs.
