Ecuador’s war on gangs saw hundreds of soldiers storm a prison and handcuff inmates in their underwear on Thursday, taking back control of the complex following the escape of the country’s most wanted crime boss.
Authorities also arrested the suspected killers of a prosecutor who was gunned down Wednesday in his car on the streets of the port city of Guayaquil, which has become a dangerous hub for the export of cocaine from neighboring countries.
Police Commander General Cesar Zapata said on social media that two suspects had been arrested.
He said a rifle, two pistols and two cars have been seized as ‘evidence.’
The slain prosecutor, Cesar Suarez, had been in charge of the investigation into last week’s dramatic, live-broadcast assault by gangsters on a state-owned TV studio, also in Guayaquil, which prompted the ongoing crackdown on the gangs.
Ecuador’s war on gangs saw hundreds of soldiers storm a prison and handcuff inmates in their underwear on Thursday (pictured), taking back control of the Litoral Penitentiary complex following the escape of the country’s most wanted crime boss
After Thursday’s raid, the army shared photos of cuffed inmates in their underwear lying face down in prison courtyards, as soldiers stood guard (pictured)
Hundreds of soldiers and police, accompanied by army trucks, poured into a vast penitentiary complex – the same one from which notorious gang boss Adolfo Macias, alias ‘Fito’ , leader of Los Choneros – escaped last week. The jailbreak sparked the government’s crackdown
Dozens of prisoners in their underwear are seen lying on the floor of the prison on Thursday
Meanwhile, hundreds of soldiers and police, accompanied by army trucks, poured into a vast penitentiary complex – the same one from which notorious gang boss Adolfo Macias, alias ‘Fito’, leader of Los Choneros – escaped last week.
The jailbreak at Litoral Penitentiary sparked a government crackdown and, in turn, fierce retaliation from criminal groups.
After Thursday’s raid, the army shared photos of cuffed inmates in their underwear lying face down in prison courtyards.
Similar images have been disseminated in recent days as the government tries to wrest control of prisons back from the gangs.
Despite being locked up, Ecuadorian prisons have become the strongholds gang leaders in recent years, out of which they can operate.
According to the Ecuadorian newspaper Primicias, Fito converted his prison cell in the complex into a ‘private bunker.
From there, he is said to have controlled Los Choneros’ criminal operations, including extortion and murder, according to the publication.
Uniformed officers are ‘in control of the external and internal perimeter of the penitentiary complex’ at Guayaquil, the army wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Once considered a bastion of peace in Latin America, Ecuador has been plunged into crisis after years of expansion by transnational cartels that use its ports to ship drugs to the United States and Europe.
In response to Fito’s escape, President Daniel Noboa imposed a state of emergency and nightly curfew.
Drug cartels reacted swiftly, threatening to execute civilians and security forces and taking hostage dozens of police and prison officials, since released.
A member of the Army guarding the Regional 8 prison complex from a helicopter during an operation in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on January 18
Military vehicles are seen arriving at the prison on Thursday ahead of the operation
Inmates are seen on a basketball court at the Litoral Penitentiary on Thursday
On January 9, attackers stormed the TV station, firing gunshots and forcing staff to lie on the ground as a woman could be heard pleading: ‘Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot.’
Police entered the studio after about 30 minutes of chaos, diffusing the situaton and arresting 13 assailants, many of them teenagers.
Noboa then declared the country in a ‘state of war,’ deploying thousands of soldiers and police to patrol the streets, hunt down gang members, drugs, and weapons.
In the past nine days, they have carried out more than 23,000 operations and arrested 2,174 people – 158 of whom were wanted for ‘terrorism,’ the army says.
The explosion in violence comes weeks after Attorney General Diana Salazar announced an investigation highlighting links between the gangs and powerful state officials, from judges to a former prisons chief.
Salazar launched the ‘Metastasis’ investigation after the prison death in 2022 of powerful drug lord Leandro Norero.
Her team scoured through chats and call logs from his cellphone, finding links to high-ranking officials who handed out favors in exchange for money, gold, prostitutes, apartments and other luxuries.
More than 900 people took part in the investigation, which resulted in more than 75 raids and dozens of arrests.
‘The response to this operation will surely be an escalation of violence,’ she predicted in December.
Salazar said she had received death threats from the powerful Los Lobos (The Wolves) gang – whose boss Fabricio Colon also escaped from prison last week.
Those investigating the gangs have become targets.
Prosecutor Suarez had probed cases involving mafia infiltration of the judicial system and corruption scandals linked to the purchases of medical equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In June last year, another prosecutor, Leonardo Palacios, was shot dead in the town of Duran, near Guayaquil, and in 2022, two prosecutors and a judge were shot in other parts of the country.
Anti-graft and anti-cartel presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was killed in a barrage of automatic gunfire after a campaign speech just weeks before elections last year that were won by Noboa.
Gangsters are seen on Tuesday after storming and taking over a TV studio in Ecuador
Prison guards are seen having been taken hostage by machete-wielding inmates
Similar treatment of prisoners has been seen in recent years in El Salvador where the country’s president has locked up 2 percent of the country’s adult population in a bid to crack down on alleged gang members.
Ecuadorian authorities attribute the unprecedented violence to a power vacuum triggered by the killing in December 2020 of Jorge Zambrano, alias ‘Rasquiña’ or ‘JL,’ the previous leader of the Los Choneros cartel before Fito.
Ever since, Los Choneros – now led by Fito – and splinter groups Los Lobos and Los Tiguerones have been fighting over territory and control, including within prison facilities, where at least 400 inmates have died since 2021 in riots.
The gangs have links to cartels from Colombia and Mexico, including the infamous Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels, who are also at war.
