Ecuador declares state of emergency after dangerous gang leader vanishes from prison

By Laura Gamba

BOGOTA, Colombia (AA) - Ecuador declared a state of emergency Monday after one of the country’s most dangerous gang leaders disappeared from his prison cell, triggering riots in at least six correctional facilities across the country.

President Daniel Noboa declared a 60-day state of emergency, the first since he came to power on Nov. 23 last year.

"I have just signed a decree for a state of emergency so that the armed forces have all the political and legal support in their actions," Noboa said on social media.

The state of emergency allows the army to act to control internal security, especially in prisons, as previous presidents have done.

The leader of the powerful Los Choneros gang, Jose Adolfo Macias, alias "Fito," was reported missing Sunday from his high-security cell at a prison in the city of Guayaquil.

Macias was sentenced in 2011 to 34 years in prison for various crimes, including murder and drug trafficking.

The Los Choneros gang has been embroiled in bloody disputes with other criminal groups with connections to cartels in Mexico and Colombia over drug trafficking routes.

More than 3,000 members of the police and armed forces have been deployed to locate Macias's whereabouts, the government confirmed.

In August last year, Macias was transferred along with other highly dangerous prisoners from the Guayaquil regional prison to the La Roca penitentiary center “as a security measure for citizens,” according to former President Guillermo Lasso.

However, 27 days later, a judge surprisingly decided to reverse the decision and ordered Macias’s return to the Guayaquil regional prison.

Although Noboa’s government intended to transfer Macias to another prison to prevent his escape, authorities confirmed that "most likely" there were "infiltrations" in the prison about an imminent security operation and Macias escaped "hours before."

Riots were reported at correctional facilities in six provinces Monday, according to SNAI, the agency in charge of prisons. It said inmates had taken prison guards hostage, although it did not report how many.

Since 2021, riots in the country’s prisons have left around 460 people dead.

Organized crime has infiltrated the nation, which until a few years ago did not have the drug trafficking problems that plagued other Latin American countries. Past governments have been unable to put a stop to organized crime groups.

Noboa was elected in November on the promise to crack down on violent crime.