President Guillermo Lasso, on a private trip to New York, announced that he was immediately returning to the country, where he convened a meeting of senior security officials.
This killing occurs a few days before the second round of the presidential election in Ecuador. Six Colombian detainees, charged with the August assassination of centrist presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, were killed on Friday October 6 during “troubles” in a prison in Guayaquil, in the southwest of the country, authorities announced.
“The six people deprived of their liberty (PPL) died” in Guayas 1 prison in Guayaquil “are of Colombian nationality and were indicted for the assassination of former presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio”indicated the prison administration in a press release, without providing further details.
Guayas 1, which houses some 6,800 inmates, is one of five prisons in the huge Guayaquil prison complex, where more than 430 inmates have died, sometimes dismembered or burned, since 2021. According to local media, Ward 7 of the prison, where the violence started, is controlled by the Los Aguilas group, one of the multiple Ecuadorian criminal gangs linked to Colombian or Mexican drug cartels, such as those of Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generacion.
Six Colombians with a serious criminal past
The deputy Fernando Villavicencio, a 59-year-old former journalist and one of the favorites for the first round of the presidential election, was shot dead by a commando of killers after a campaign meeting in Quito on August 9, eleven days before the ballot. Six Colombians with a serious criminal past were arrested in flagrante delicto, and another killed by the victim’s bodyguards. In total, around ten people were arrested during the ensuing investigation.
This six-fold murder comes in the home stretch before the second round of the presidential election on October 15. The vote will pit Luisa Gonzalez, runner-up to former President Correa, against the conservative Daniel Noboa, son of one of the country’s richest businessmen. The latest polls show the two candidates neck and neck. Fernando Villavicencio’s replacement, Christian Zurita, also a former journalist, was eliminated in the first round.