One of Ecuador’s most feared gangsters is believed to have escaped from jail, a authorities spokesman stated Monday as a whole lot of cops looked for a most safety jail.
“The almost definitely” state of affairs is that he fled a number of hours earlier than a deliberate police operation within the jail, stated authorities spokesman Roberto Izurieta.
“The full pressure of the State is being deployed to seek out this extraordinarily harmful particular person.”
Izurieta bemoaned “the extent of infiltration” of felony teams, and stated the Ecuadorian jail system had “failed.”
Long a peaceable haven between prime cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has seen violence explode lately as enemy gangs with hyperlinks to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for management.
Gang wars largely play out within the nation’s prisons, the place felony leaders akin to Fito wield immense management.
The battles have left some 460 individuals lifeless contained in the nation’s prisons since 2021, their our bodies usually discovered dismembered, decapitated, or incinerated.
Fito has been held since 2011, serving a 34-year sentence for organized crime, drug trafficking and homicide.
In a large operation involving hundreds of safety forces, he was transferred to the 150-person La Roca jail in August final yr, after the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
Every week earlier than his dying, Villavicencio stated he had obtained threats from the gang.