(Quito) The United Kingdom’s honorary consul in the port city of Guayaquil in Ecuador, Colin Armstrong, was kidnapped in the province of Los Rios, in the southwest of the country, police announced on Saturday.
The diplomat, who is also a farmer, was kidnapped in the early hours of the morning from his farm in Baba canton.
In a message broadcast on X (formerly Twitter), the police indicated that “operational and investigative work” was underway in Los Rios.
Neither the UK Embassy nor the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry have commented yet.
In recent years, Ecuador has become a center of operations for foreign and local drug cartels that impose a regime of terror with murders, kidnappings and extortion.
Ultra-violent gangs control the prisons and streets of many cities and ports, where violence has skyrocketed.
Since 2018, the national homicide rate has quadrupled, from 6 to 26 per 100,000 people.
Located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest producers of cocaine, Ecuador seized a record quantity of 210 tonnes of drugs on its territory in 2021.