The incredible – and undisturbed – escape from prison of a drug trafficking prince, yet another episode in the climate of insecurity and violence that has gripped Ecuador for years, has pushed President Daniel Noboa to decree a state of emergency for two months on everything the national territory. The measure, the first of its kind adopted by Noboa, who came to power in November, provides for the immediate intervention of the army in all Ecuadorian prisons, a night curfew between 11pm and 5am and limitations on freedom of assembly and movement and privacy in communications.
Adolfo Macías, known as 'Fito', considered the main drug trafficking boss in the country and leader of the criminal group Los Choneros, seemed to have “disappeared” from the maximum security prison of the Litoral of Guayaquil. Until yesterday the police assumed that he was “hiding in some inaccessible area” of the prison. The super boss, sentenced in 2011 to 34 years in prison for various crimes, including drug trafficking and murder, had instead fled, perhaps already since Christmas, having been replaced in his cell by a lookalike.
It is conceivable that this revelation would have sent the head of state, who had made the fight against violence and corruption the emblem of his victorious electoral campaign, into a rage, pushing him to decree the exceptional measure. “The time is over when organized crime dictated to the government of the day what to do,” Noboa declared in a short video released through his social channels. After indicating that he had given “clear and precise instructions” to military and police commanders to intervene in the control of prisons, the head of state asked citizens to support the police forces called upon to guarantee civil coexistence.
However, the restrictions envisaged by the decree and the mobilization of the armed forces did not serve, at least on the first day, to really control national public order, because the country – which has now earned the record of being the most violent in Latin America – has was overwhelmed by a wave of violence, which terrorized the population: explosive attacks, fires of vehicles and infrastructure, riots in six prisons with the kidnapping of warders and police officers, and electricity blackouts.
According to the police and local authorities, the attacks affected seven provinces: Esmeraldas, Pichincha, Azuay, El Oro, Los Ríos, Loja, Chimborazo and Guayas. Not only. The Ecuadorian authorities had to admit today that another well-known drug trafficker and leader of the Los Lobos gang, Fabricio Colón Pico, managed to escape, together with around thirty inmates, from the Riobamba prison, in the province of Chimborazo, where he had been locked up just three days earlier. Furthermore, if the entry of 300 army soldiers into the Litoral prison of Guayaquil, from where 'Fito' escaped, was able to restore normality, this was not the case for other detention centers, such as that of Turi, where the rioting prisoners kidnapped 49 guards and 12 kitchen workers. Or like in Ambato, marked by a hunger strike by inmates who kidnapped 15 prison guards.
#Ecuador #incredible #escape #narco #king #triggers #alarm #state #emergency #decreed #country