2024-01-08 19:15:32
Published8. January 2024, 8:15 p.m.
Ecuador: Public enemy No. 1 cannot be found in his prison
“Fito”, leader of the country’s main criminal gang, was serving his sentence in the vast Guayaquil penitentiary. But since Sunday, the drug trafficker has been absent. Did he escape?
In the prison yard, the trafficker’s fellow inmates wrote messages: “We want Fito back” and “With Fito, we sow peace.”
AFP
Public enemy No. 1 in Ecuador, leader of the country’s main criminal gang, cannot be found in the Guayaquil prison (south) where he was serving his sentence, and security forces are looking for him, the Ecuadorian presidency announced on Monday .
Security forces “are hard at work to find this extremely dangerous individual,” said Communications Secretary Roberto Izurieta, responding to local TV.
The prisoner probably fled on Sunday “a few hours” before a control operation carried out in the prison, added Roberto Izurieta, who however did not say clearly that the prisoner had escaped.
He vanished from his high security cell
On Sunday, the police chief admitted to the press that Adolfo Macias, alias “Fito”, was “not found in the place where he should have been”, a high security cell in the vast penitentiary of the port city of Guayaquil.
No other official source has acknowledged or commented on the probable escape. The prosecutor’s office announced that it had opened an investigation into the “alleged escape” of “Fito”.
The leader of the “Choneros” gang (the main player in the thriving drug trade in Ecuador) had been serving a 34-year prison sentence since 2011 for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.
The prison system is a “failure”, says the government
The presidential official deplored that “the level of infiltration” of criminal groups within the state “is very high” and described the Ecuadorian penitentiary system as a “failure.” “The search (for “Fito”) continues (…) He will be found, he must be found,” he said.
The name “Fito” has made headlines in recent months following the assassination in early August of one of the main candidates in the presidential election. The victim, a former journalist and parliamentarian, had reported, shortly before his execution, death threats from the leader of the Choneros.
Sporting a large beard, “Fito”, known to be very charismatic, studied law in prison until obtaining his lawyer’s degree. He inspires great terror in his fellow prisoners and has distinguished himself by the publication in recent months on social networks of a song in his glory by a Mexican group, with a video clip and images filmed in his cell.
(AFP)
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