The leader of the Panamanian gang calling itself “Los Terror Killa” has been arrested in a shopping centre in Madrid two months and one week after the authorities of his country of origin launched a large-scale operation to dismantle this criminal group, which they attribute to crimes ranging from arms and drug trafficking to selective murders. Francis Jiménez Sutherland, alias Francis, Francis escaped on July 16 from that operation, in which 31 people were arrested, but the Prosecutor’s Office asked Interpol to issue an “international red alert” to arrest him. Interpol (the International Criminal Police Organization, which includes 196 countries) considers Francis to be one of the most wanted fugitives from Latin America in Europe.
The image of the leader of Los Terror Killa reached the news in Panama before it did in Spain. The National Police announced his arrest on Tuesday, although the Panamanian authorities had already reported it on Wednesday, September 18. With a pixelated image of the arrested man, dressed in a grey t-shirt and sitting in front of a police table, the Panamanian prosecutor announced almost a week ago its intention to request extradition so that Jiménez Sutherland can answer for the case they already have open, and which they called Operation Istanbul, for a crime against public safety, in the form of gang activity. The senior anti-gang prosecutor, Cheryl Álvarez, reported his arrest in different media.
The same grey shirt appears in the images of Jiménez Sutherland’s arrest as he calmly strolled through an open shopping centre located in the Madrid town of Las Rozas, near the capital. The arrested man was approached by two police officers who detained him next to a shop window, as can be seen in the images provided by the National Police. The same officers accompanied him afterwards, once he was arrested, as he left the police station.
The Terror Killa gang operated in the Panamanian province of Colon, in the northern section of the Panama Canal and 80 kilometers from Panama City. The group, made up of men and women and led by the fugitive, was dedicated to committing various criminal acts, especially contract killings, drug trafficking, armed robbery and home robberies, according to the National Police. Among the thirty people arrested last July were 14 who operated from the La Esperanza Penitentiary Complex, in the same Caribbean province.
During the investigation to find his whereabouts, Spanish agents discovered that part of the fugitive’s family could live in different parts of Spain, so they carried out surveillance and investigations in several Spanish provinces. They detected two addresses in Madrid and Barcelona and intensified surveillance of a house in El Escorial. According to investigators, “a large group of relatives” lived there, who also changed their address frequently.
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The agents detected Francis’ presence in one of the houses they had just moved to and after following the vehicle in which he was travelling, he was arrested while he was window shopping in a Madrid shopping centre.
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