Several inmates from the Litoral Penitentiary and the Regional Prison in Guayaquil, Ecuador, They protested this Monday the transfer to another prison of José Adolfo Macías, alias ‘Fito’, head of the feared group “Los Choneros”.
He is the leader of the most powerful criminal gang in the country and whom presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio accused of having threatened him just days before he was shot dead as he left a rally in Quito.
Alias Fito was transferred on Saturday from the Guayas Province Regional Prison to the maximum security prison called La Roca.
Both prisons are located within the Guayas prison complex, the largest in the country, and made up of five prisons, of which three of them had already been intervened by the Police and the Armed Forces within the framework of the state of emergency declared at the end of July in the national penitentiary system.
As a result of these interventions carried out as a result of the last prison massacre that occurred in the Litoral Penitentiary, the largest and most populated prison in Ecuador, the police and military found a large arsenal of weapons in the possession of the prisoners, including rifles and grenades.
(Also read: The legacy of Fernando Villavicencio, the standard bearer against corruption in Ecuador)
Fito was transferred over the weekend in the middle of a large military and police operation in which Some 4,000 agents entered the Guayaquil penitentiary (southwestern Ecuador) armed and in armored vehicles. where the drug dealer was.
Macías controlled at least one cell block of the prison from which he was transferred and will now be in a maximum security prison for 150 people from which, however, he had already escaped in the past.
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Protests against the transfer of alias Fito
The protests began around 11 in the morning on Monday when several prisoners from the Regional Jail went up to the roofs of the penitentiary center to protest against the transfer of Fito.
There were hundreds of men who held signs that read “we want Fito’s return” or “Fito is not a loot from politics.” Other signs read “we want peace, return to Fito.”
As reported by the newspaper Ecuavisa, the National Service for Comprehensive Care for Adults Deprived of Liberty, in charge of prison security in El Ecuador, reinforced security at the Regional Prison and around 12 noon the prisoners had already returned to their pavilions.
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According to the cited media, there were also protests on the Vía a Duarte, in the vicinity of the prison, where several motorcyclists mobilized in their vehicles to demand the return of alias Fito to the prison from which he was removed over the weekend.
These protests led the Guayaquil mobility agents to close the road.
(Keep reading: Who is alias ‘Fito’, drug trafficker accused of threatening Fernando Villavicencio in Ecuador)
We share another video
Subjects on motorcycles arrive outside the “La Roca” prison to demand the transfer of alias “Fito” to the Litoral Penitentiary in #Guayaquil.
At the moment, the road to Daule is closed for several minutes. pic.twitter.com/44VmDhuabO
— 🇪🇨 CUPSFIRE (@Cupsfire_gye) August 14, 2023
The name “Fito” became media in Ecuador since Wednesday, after the murder in Quito of Villavicencio, a centrist who was second in the intention to vote, according to a survey.
The 59-year-old politician had denounced a week before that he received death threats from Macías, sentenced to 34 years in prison for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.
According to Villavicencio, one of the warnings came to him through a political ally in the coastal province of Manabí, where the town of Chone is located, where the Macías gang was born.
An “emissary of alias Fito” contacted him, Villavicencio explained. It was “to tell him that if I continue (…), mentioning Los Choneros, they are going to break (murder) me,” he told the Vis a Vis program.
(You can read: The day Fernando Villavicencio was warned that he could end up like Galán)
According to President Guillermo Lasso, The transfer of alias Fito was done “for the safety of citizens and detainees. Ecuador is going to recover peace and security,” Lasso wrote on his X network account.
In addition, he anticipated that, “if violent reactions are generated, we will act with all the force of the State.”
During the intervention, the inmates Tomas Daniel Piguave Candelario, known by the alias “Gordo Candela” or “Candelario”; and Freddy Gonzalo Mendoza Fernández, alias “Gordo Mendoza”, both from the organized crime group known as “Águilas”, according to the Ministry of Defense.
This morning, following Decree 823, the transfer of alias Fito to the La Roca prison for the safety of citizens and detainees has been carried out. Ecuador will recover peace and security.
If violent reactions are generated, we will act with full force… pic.twitter.com/N2cwoEH2zp— Guillermo Lasso (@LassoGuillermo) August 12, 2023
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With AFP and EFE
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