2024-01-09 02:28:46
José Adolfo M., alias Fito, leader of the Choneros, on Saturday, August 12, 2023. Ecuadorian Armed Forces
The Government of Ecuador does not know when José Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias Fito, the most dangerous criminal in the country, escaped from the Guayaquil prison. It took him 15 hours to recognize that the leader of the bloodthirsty criminal gang Los Choneros, the operational arm of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, had escaped. “Today the Police, together with the Armed Forces, realized the non-presence of one of the inmates that prevails in this social rehabilitation center,” reported the Police Commander, César Zapata.
The statements were made when leaving an emergency meeting of the Security Council, called by the president. The Guayaquil penitentiary complex, which includes five prisons where more than 12,000 people are deprived of liberty, woke up with a strong police and military contingent this Sunday, January 7. It was for a weapons control operation, said the brief statement from SNAI, the government institution responsible for what happens in prisons. Another instruction was also followed, to eliminate the prison’s plugs (switches), EL PAÍS learned from a police source. At the beginning of December, President Daniel Noboa had already warned in an interview that he should start with the basics, “not to put a plug on the leader of the gang.” The cell in which Fito was, according to the president, has four plugs, “he has more plugs than a hotel room.”
The operation to control prohibited objects was carried out and “the seizure of cell phones, plugs, knives, and other evidence found was achieved,” said the commander, and it was there that “the non-presence of one of the inmates was noticed.” “, he added, and that the search continues inside the prison complex, while the State Prosecutor’s Office opened an ex officio investigation and procedures are carried out at the site.
José Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias Fito, is 44 years old, has 14 judicial proceedings for different crimes, including robbery, organized crime, possession of weapons and murder, which together amounted to the maximum sentence of 34 years in prison, of which he has been serving 12 held in the Guayaquil Regional Prison. It’s not the first time he’s run away. In February 2013, Fito and 15 other prisoners from the Los Choneros gang, including the group’s leader, Jorge Luis Zambrano, escaped from the maximum security prison called La Roca, which is within the same prison complex. For 10 months they were the most wanted criminals in the country, until they were found by the Police.
Fito’s rise to the leadership of Los Choneros occurred following the murder of Jorge Luis Zambrano, alias Rasquiña, who maintained the hegemony of the organization that had its beginnings in the 1980s in Manabí, a province on the Ecuadorian coast. . The Choneros gained fame as hitmen, although over time they expanded their crimes to drug trafficking, micro-trafficking, extortion and robberies. They were the first to create links with foreign cartels, according to police information. After the Rasquiña crime, Los Choneros split up, and trusted men took the leadership, forming new cells: Los Águilas and Los Fatales, the latter obeying Macías.
On August 12, Fito had been transferred to La Roca, in an operation that required almost 4,000 police and military personnel, and which later caused riots in the prison that demanded that he be returned to his fortress in the Regional, something that ended to happen thanks to the sentence of a judge who ordered his transfer back to prison from where he commanded all operations.
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