Quito, Aug 14 (EFE).- The journalist Christian Zurita, who assumed the candidacy for the Presidency of Ecuador from the assassinated Fernando Villavicencio, asked this Monday for answers to five former assembly members that his colleague denounced last April for allegedly planning a possible attack against his life through hitmen.
“They must respond to the country for the circumstances for which they were accused by Fernando,” said Zurita in a video broadcast on social networks by the Gente Buena political group, from Villavicencio, referring to this complaint that the journalist and former assemblyman presented to the Prosecutor of Ecuador on April 13 of this year.
According to Zurita, those accused by Villavicencio in that complaint were “Pablo Muentes, from the conservative Social Christian Party (PSC), and Ronny Aleaga, Roberto Cuero, Ronald González and Walter Gómez, related to the Citizen Revolution,” the political movement that led by former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
The complaint, according to the presidential candidate, “narrates how Fernando Villavicencio found out, through assembly members who preferred to remain anonymous, of this condition and of this planning that they were carrying out.”
Thus, he insisted that “they must give answers to the country after the brutal crime of Fernando”, riddled with bullets last Wednesday at the exit of an electoral rally in Quito by a group of alleged Colombian hitmen, of whom six are in provisional prison and one He died allegedly due to the exchange of shots with security personnel.
On April 13, Villavicencio reported through his social networks that he was formalizing the complaint with the names of at least five assembly members.
“I have received information from parliamentary sources about an attack by ‘hitmen’ that several legislators who have shown open defiance of my management are preparing against me and my family,” wrote the now murdered presidential candidate.
Villavicencio filed this complaint when he was president of the Oversight Commission of the National Assembly (Parliament), at a time when the impeachment trial was taking place against the current president, the conservative Guillermo Lasso, who promoted the opposition, where they were correísmo and the PSC.
The journalist, who currently held a position of the center, was configured throughout his career as one of Correa’s staunch enemies, as a result of the investigations he carried out together with Zurita and the corruption complaints he filed against the administration of the former president.
Although both the family and some Villavicencio supporters have pointed to the former president without evidence, Correa has categorically denied on several occasions that he was behind the crime.
In the days prior to his murder, Villavicencio also denounced a series of death threats received against him and his security team that allegedly originated from Adolfo Macías “Fito”, the boss of the Los Choneros criminal gang, one of the most large dedicated to organized crime and drug trafficking in Ecuador.
During his campaign, Villavicencio had promised a frontal fight against corruption and drug trafficking mafias, which, according to the government, caused the wave of crimes and violence in which Ecuador is submerged, which closed last year with a rate of 25.32 homicides. per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest in its history.
On Saturday, “Fito”, who is serving a 34-year prison sentence, was transferred from prison from the Guayaquil Regional Prison to La Roca, the maximum security prison in Ecuador, which on Monday generated protests from prisoners of the prison complex from Guayas who demand that he return to his original cell for his safety.
A team from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is participating in the investigations to solve the Villavicencio crime, which arrived in Ecuador on Saturday at the request of Lasso, after the US government offered him “urgent investigative assistance.” . EFE
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