They are killing those accused of killing Fernando Villavicencio – Telemundo Denver

The seventh accused in the killing of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was killed in a Quito prison, the country’s prison system said Saturday, a day after the six other alleged killers were confirmed dead.

The National Service for Adults Deprived of Liberty (SNAI) reported in a statement the death of the seventh detainee, although it did not provide further details about the circumstances in which the crime occurred. He also did not mention his nationality, only identifying him as “Jose M.”

The authorities did not reveal who was behind the murders or how they might have occurred inside the same prisons.

These murders prompted President Guillermo Lasso to hold a last-minute meeting with his security cabinet to analyze the situation in the prisons.

Lasso announced on the social network X about the meeting with the Security Cabinet. The President suspended his diplomatic activities scheduled for the coming days in Korea.

The first of the six alleged killers killed on Friday were Colombians who were arrested hours after the murder of Villavicencio, on August 9 in Quito. All the detainees were in the Litoral prison in the city of Guayaquil, which is considered the most dangerous prison in the Andean country.

In a statement on Saturday, the Colombian Foreign Ministry condemned the killing of its six citizens and offered its support to the Ecuadorian authorities in the investigations “to clarify this abhorrent truth.”

The Ecuadorian Public Prosecutor’s Office announced the previous day that it was conducting autopsies to determine the causes of deaths, although it had not announced the results.

In his network account

The killed Colombians were identified as: John Gregor R., Andres Manuel M., Ade Fernando G., Camilo Andres R., Solís Omini C., and José Nieder L., who weeks earlier testified from Guayaquil at a court-requested hearing. The Public Prosecution, and no details were revealed about that.

This is what happened in Quito, Ecuador.

The investigation into the assassination – in which the Public Prosecutor’s Office was prosecuting 13 people involved, including the seven alleged killers who were killed – is scheduled to end in the coming days.

Litoral Prison is part of a prison complex in Guayaquil, 270 kilometers southwest of the capital, where bloody massacres have occurred in recent years, the most violent of which occurred in September 2021, which left 122 inmates dead.

In Ecuador, a state of exception prevails in the prison system, which the authorities regard as command centers from which dangerous criminal gangs and organized crime carry out murders, kidnappings, extortion, robberies and every litany of crimes that plunge the country into a wave of fear. . .

In one of them, the Guayaquil regional prison is being held, close to the prison of Adolfo Macias, nicknamed “Vito” and the head of a gang with ties to a Mexican drug cartel, whom former president Villavicencio identified as the author. For threats against his life and the lives of his campaign team.