2023-08-13 12:18:00
Fernando Villavicencio, during the rally at a school in Quito just before the attack. KAREN VISIT | Reuters
The widow appeared before the press with a bulletproof vest and helmet
13 ago 2023 . Updated at 12:18 p.m.
Verónica Sarauz, the wife of Fernando Villavicencio, the candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador who was assassinated last Wednesday, blamed the State for the death of her husband this Saturday due to lack of protection and former President Rafael Correa and the corresmo.
The State is directly responsible for the murder of my husband, Fernando Villavicenciosaid Sarauz at a press conference in Quito, who according to the candidate’s close family had been separated from him for six years.
Sarauz assured that the State has to give many answers about what happened and denounced a lack of protection measures against the one who was still her husband, who was shot several times as he left a meeting at a school in Quito on Wednesday afternoon.
I don’t want to think that they sold my husband to be assassinated in an infamous way, said the Ecuadorian, who did not provide evidence about the complaints made against the State and against the corresmo, of which Villavicencio had become his bitter enemy as a result of the complaints that he brought against them.
I want to tell the corresmo (…) that all of them are responsible, if not directly or indirectly, for the death of my husband, but it was in this Government that my husband died and it is the one that has to give explanations, I allege Sarauz, who arrived at the press conference wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet and flanked by a member of security who carried a rifle.
Former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) has emphatically denied on several occasions having anything to do with the murder, for which six Colombians have been arrested for the moment, accused of being the alleged hitmen who carried out the crime.
And there is still no clarity about who is behind the crime, but there is speculation that it could be one of the criminal gangs that operate in the country and that the candidate himself denounced direct threats before his death, and specifically referred to Fito, identified by authorities as the leader of Los Choneros.
A seventh man, also a Colombian national, died the same day of the attack as a result, according to the Ecuadorian authorities, of injuries suffered from the exchange of shots between the attackers and the security personnel protecting Villavicencio.
Nine other people were also injured in the attack, five of whom are in stable condition at the Women’s Clinic, where Villavicencio also arrived in a sudden condition, which prevented health personnel from saving his life, according to a statement from that health center.
Villavicencio was one of the eight candidates registered to succeed the current president, the conservative Guillermo Lasso, in the extraordinary elections called for next Sunday, August 20, where the winner will complete the 2021-2025 period, interrupted by Lasso when he dissolved the National Assembly ( Parliament), with an opposition majority, when it was about to vote on his dismissal.
The journalist and former assemblyman was assassinated in the framework of an electoral campaign that, before the attack, already had as practically the only topic of discussion the security crisis that has affected Ecuador for more than two years, with recurring murders and massacres that the Government attributed to organized crime and drug trafficking.
Filed in: Ecuador Rafael Correa
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