A seventh defendant in the murder of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was murdered in a prison in Quito, the country’s prison system reported Saturday, a day after the murder of the other six suspected killers was confirmed.
The National Service for Adult Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI) reported the death of the seventh inmate in a statement, but did not provide further details on the circumstances under which the crime was committed. He also didn’t mention his nationality, identifying him only as “José M.”
Authorities have not revealed who was behind the killings or how it is possible they were committed in the same prisons.
These killings prompted President Guillermo Lasso to hold a last-minute meeting with his security cabinet to analyze the situation in prisons.
Lasso announced the meeting with his security cabinet on the social network X. The president has suspended his diplomatic activities in Korea planned for the coming days.
The first six suspected killers murdered on Friday were Colombians arrested in Quito a few hours after the Villavicencio crime on August 9th. All prisoners were in the Litoral prison in the city of Guayaquil, considered the most dangerous prison in the Andean country.
Colombia’s foreign ministry condemned the killing of its six citizens in a statement on Saturday and offered its assistance to Ecuadorian authorities in the investigation to “unravel this heinous fact.”
Ecuador’s public prosecutor’s office reported the day before that it was conducting autopsies to determine the causes of death, but has not released the results.
In his network account
The murdered Colombians were Jhon Gregore R., Andrés Manuel M., Adey Fernando G., Camilo Andrés R., Sules Osmini C. and José Neyder L., who weeks earlier had given their testimony from Guayaquil in a request from the court The public prosecutor’s office had given a hearing and no details were disclosed.
This happened in Quito, Ecuador.
The investigation into the attack, in which the public prosecutor’s office prosecuted 13 people involved, including the seven murdered alleged murderers, is expected to be completed in the coming days.
The Litoral Penitentiary is part of a prison complex in Guayaquil, 270 kilometers southwest of the capital, which has been the site of bloody massacres in recent years, the most violent of which occurred in September 2021, leaving 122 inmates dead.
In Ecuador there is a state of emergency in the prison system, which is considered by the authorities as a command center from where dangerous criminal gangs and organized crime carry out contract killings, kidnappings, extortions, robberies and all kinds of crimes that plunge the country into a wave of fear. .
In one of them, the regional prison of Guayaquil, near the penitentiary, is held Adolfo Macías, alias “Fito” and leader of a gang with ties to a Mexican drug cartel, identified by former President Villavicencio as the author of threats against his life and that of his campaign team.