2024-01-11 14:21:53
Ecuador has not yet emerged from the shock caused by the day of terror and chaos experienced on Tuesday due to the violent actions perpetrated by criminal gangs, on which the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, has declared “war.”
The armed assault broadcast on the TC Television channel, the burning of vehicles, the kidnapping of police officers and the riots with hostages in various prisons in the country have led Noboa to make a controversial and unprecedented decision to consider organized crime groups as actors. belligerents against the stability of the State.
And by decreeing the “internal armed conflict”, The criminal gangs that operate in Ecuador became considered “terrorists” and military objectives to be “neutralized”, so the first day under this scenario resulted in “329 terrorists” arrested and five killed, in addition to two police officers killed and one injured.
In the streets, activity has been very reduced, with lIn-person classes suspended in schools until Friday, many people sheltered in their homes, and a tight security cordon around the Carondelet presidential palace, in the historic center of Quito.
Meanwhile, a total of 139 prison officials, including guards and administrative staff, are still held in at least five prisons. where the prisoners have rioted as a measure of protest against the heavy-handed policy that Noboa wants to implement in Ecuador’s prison system.
Military guards the areas surrounding the Radio Canela station, in Quito, where President Daniel Noboa went for a live interview. Photo: EFE
Among those detained there are 125 prison guards and 14 administrative officials in the prisons of Cuenca, Azogues, Napo, Ambato and Latacunga.
In the latter, located 70 kilometers south of Quito, the prisoners swarmed on the roofs of the prison complex and even carried banners demanding “peace”, as did their relatives concentrated outside, as EFE was able to verify.
Daniel Noboa “does not negotiate” with “terrorists”
At the moment Noboa shows uncompromising to negotiate the freedom of prison staff. “We are doing everything possible and impossible to bring them back safely, but we cannot stop a war because of that, because the State is at war,” she remarked.
“We are in a state of war and we cannot give in to these terrorists,” said the young president, in his first public intervention since the outbreak of this crisis, his first as president after taking office in November, after a campaign with the hallmark of drug trafficking violence.
This wave of violence occurs in the face of the apparently imminent intention of the Noboa government to isolate the leaders of the criminal gangs before taking them to two maximum security prisons whose construction it plans to present this Thursday, with a design similar to those used in Mexico and El Salvador.
Prisons in the spotlight
The prisons are in Noboa’s sights after more than 450 prisoners have been murdered there since 2020 in a series of prison massacres due to clashes between rival gangs, a violence that has spread to the streets to make Ecuador one of the most violent countries in the region.
Warned of this plan, José Adolfo Macías ‘Fito’, the boss of ‘Los Choneros’, the largest criminal gang in Ecuador and one of the most violent, escaped from prison on Sunday, for which Ecuador offers a reward for his capture.
Also included in the reward program was Fabricio Colón Pico, a leader of the criminal gang ‘Los Lobos’ accused of allegedly planning an attack against the attorney general, Diana Salazar, and who escaped on Monday from the Riobamba prison after a riot where A total of 32 prisoners escaped.
Canal raiders prosecuted for terrorism
At the same time, the Prosecutor’s Office prosecuted the 13 detained for the assault on the television channel’s facilities on Tuesday in Guayaquil for terrorism, among whom there is a Venezuelan and two minors.
Military personnel check a car during a security procedure in the center of Quito, this Wednesday. Photo: AFP
The eleven adults, including the Venezuelan, were ordered to be placed in preventive detention, while the two minors, aged 15 and 17, will be placed in a detention center while the investigations continue.
He fear still remains in the group at the time when these people burst into the television studio, hooded and armed, and pointed guns at the staff there, all broadcast live nationally.
“I never thought I would experience what happened yesterday in my life. It was disastrous for all the canal workers. We were all afraid to die or that a colleague was killed or injured,” creative producer Carlos Vega told EFE.
One of the camera operators will not get it out of his head that “comrade José Luis Calderón is the criminals They put a stick of dynamite in his chest. We all saw it in Ecuador.”
The dialogue prevented it from ending in a bloodbath, General Víctor Herrera Leiva, commander of the Ecuadorian Police, declared in an interview with EFE. With the dialogue “they sought to get them to desist from using weapons, because inside the canal they had two long weapons, a submachine gun and three explosive devices,” he explained.
#detainees #militarized #streets