Ecuador: Gang-ruled prisons, assassinated politicians and a drug lord’s killing

Published

2 years ago

September 3, 2023

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A mass hostage taking in Ecuador’s gang-ruled prisons and the assassination of a politician are the latest bloody episodes in a country gripped by the cocaine trade.

The South American nation has descended into violence in recent years, with the government shown to be weak in the face of increasingly brutal drug cartels.

Earlier this week inmates in six different prisons took dozens of guards and police hostage for more than a day, while outside the walls explosions went off across the country.

The 50 guards and seven officers were eventually let go and were reported to be safe – but the circumstances under which they were released are unclear.

The government believes members of criminal gangs inside the prisons carried out the violence in response to efforts to take back control of several jails – relocating inmates and seizing weapons.

Authorities have also pointed to a power vacuum created by the killing of a druglord known as Rasquina three years ago as pouring fuel on the fire, but experts say the problem goes back much further…

‘A wave of retaliation that ended up claiming his life’

Security analyst Daniel Ponton believes this week’s violence is intended to generate fear among the population – and influence politics.

He said the attacks were “systematic and clearly planned” and showed the state was ineffective at preventing violence.

Ecuador is set to elect a new president in a run-off vote next month, but one of the prominent candidates was assassinated before the first round.

Fernando Villavicencio had made clear he was willing to challenge organised crime – and had a plan to do it.

The former journalist had proposed militarising Ecuador’s ports and taking back control of the prisons, Will Freeman, a political scientist at the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank, told Sky News.

“In a sense his proposals set off a wave of retaliation that ended up claiming his life,” Mr Freeman said.

Mr Villavicencio had accused the Los Choneros cartel and its imprisoned leader, Adolfo Macias, of threatening him and his campaign team days before the assassination.

Competition over drug routes through Ecuador

Ecuador is a “drug trafficker’s paradise” sandwiched between the world’s two largest producers of coca (the plant from which cocaine is derived), Mr Freeman says.

Amounts of cocaine seized in the country – which notably do not include the amount that evades authorities – have skyrocketed in recent years.

The national currency is dollars which makes it ideal for cartels wanting to launder money, he added.

“Narcotrafficking didn’t begin yesterday in Ecuador,” he said. “It’s being going on since the ’90s, 2000s.”

But he says it used to be under the control of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who had a monopoly.

But when FARC laid down their weapons as part of a peace agreement in 2016, things changed.

Since then, control over the drug routes across the Ecuador-Colombia border has been a competition among several groups, Dr Annette Idler, an associate professor of global security at the University of Oxford, told Sky News.

Mexican drug cartels, present in Ecuador since the 1990s, have also taken advantage of the situation, she said.

She added: “Another factor is domestic groups that are the ones we’ve seen involved in the prison violence, they’ve become more professionalised.

“There’s a lot of competition over drug trafficking routes that go from Colombia via Ecuador to the US and that then has led to those unprecedented levels of violence in the country.”

Death of a drug lord

Ecuadorian authorities have suggested that some of the recent violence stems from the power vacuum created by the assassination of Jorge Luis Zambrano, the leader of Los Choneros.

Asked if this was the case, both Mr Freeman and Dr Idler said it played a role but was part of a much bigger picture.

Zambrano, known by his nickname Rasquina, led the cartel as it took over much of the drug trade left by the demobilisation of FARC.

Mr Freeman said: “When he was taken out there began to be more intense fighting between Los Choneros and their rivals, and also within Los Choneros among mid-level commanders for control of the organisation – fighting which continues to this day.”

“That explains some of the violence”, Dr Idler told Sky News. But she added: “It’s just a smaller piece of a much larger picture, which is much more about the geopolitical landscape and the security landscape that is about the cocaine.

“So it’s much more about understanding how those different types of illicit flows, the cocaine flows, the weapons that are being trafficked… how they are shaping the ways in which different types of groups try to have control over the territory.”

Asked what the solution is to the crisis, Dr Idler says the problem cannot be solved by Ecuador alone.

Instead, she says, it needs to be a regional approach with investment in development, sustainability and building capacity across multiple countries.

World

Stock markets slump for second day running after Trump announces tariffs – in worst day for indexes since COVID

Published

5 hours ago

April 4, 2025

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Stock markets slump for second day running after Trump announces tariffs - in worst day for indexes since COVID

Worldwide stock markets have plummeted for the second day running as the fallout from Donald Trump’s global tariffs continues.

While European and Asian markets suffered notable falls, American indexes were the worst hit, with Wall Street closing to a sea of red on Friday following Thursday’s rout – the worst day in US markets since the COVID-19 pandemic.

As it happened: Worst week’s trading in five years

All three of the US’s major indexes were down by more than 5% at market close; The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 5.5%, the S&P 500 was 5.97% lower, and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 5.82%.

The Nasdaq was also 22% below its record-high set in December, which indicates a bear market.

Read more: What’s a bear market?

Ever since the US president announced the tariffs on Wednesday evening, analysts estimate that around $4.9trn (£3.8trn) has been wiped off the value of the global stock market.

Mr Trump has remained unapologetic as the markets struggle, posting in all-caps on Truth Social before the markets closed that “only the weak will fail”.

The UK’s leading stock market, the FTSE 100, also suffered its worst daily drop in more than five years, closing 4.95% down, a level not seen since March 2020.

And the Japanese exchange Nikkei 225 dropped by 2.75% at end of trading, down 20% from its recent peak in July last year.

Trump holds trade deal talks – reports

It comes as a source told CNN that Mr Trump has been in discussions with Vietnamese, Indian and Israeli representatives to negotiate bespoke trade deals that could alleviate proposed tariffs on those countries before a deadline next week.

The source told the US broadcaster the talks were being held in advance of the reciprocal levies going into effect next week.

Vietnam faced one of the highest reciprocal tariffs announced by the US president this week, with 46% rates on imports. Israeli imports face a 17% rate, and Indian goods will be subject to 26% tariffs.

China – hit with 34% tariffs on imported goods – has also announced it will issue its own levy of the same rate on US imports.

Mr Trump said China “played it wrong” and “panicked – the one thing they cannot afford to do” in another all-caps Truth Social post earlier on Friday.

Later, on Air Force One, the US president told reporters that “the beauty” of the tariffs is that they allow for negotiations, referencing talks with Chinese company ByteDance on the sale of social media app TikTok.

He said: “We have a situation with TikTok where China will probably say, ‘We’ll approve a deal, but will you do something on the tariffs?’

“The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. They always have.”

World

Financial markets were always going to respond to Trump tariffs but they’re also battling with another problem

Published

9 hours ago

April 4, 2025

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Financial markets were always going to respond to Trump tariffs but they're also battling with another problem

Global financial markets gave a clear vote of no-confidence in President Trump’s economic policy.

The damage it will do is obvious: costs for companies will rise, hitting their earnings.

The consequences will ripple throughout the global economy, with economists now raising their expectations for a recession, not only in the US, but across the world.

Tariffs latest: FTSE 100 suffers biggest daily drop since COVID

Financial investors had been gradually re-calibrating their expectations of Donald Trump over the past few months.

Hopes that his actions may not match his rhetoric were dashed on Wednesday as he imposed sweeping tariffs on the US’ trading partners, ratcheting up protectionism to a level not seen in more than a century.

Markets were always going to respond to that but they are also battling with another problem: the lack of certainty when it comes to Trump.

He is a capricious figure and we can only guess his next move. Will he row back? How far is he willing to negotiate and offer concessions?

These are massive unknowns, which are piled on to uncertainty about how countries will respond.

China has already retaliated and Europe has indicated it will go further.

That will compound the problems for the global economy and undoubtedly send shivers through the markets.

Much is yet to be determined, but if there’s one thing markets hate, it’s uncertainty.

World

Court confirms sacking of South Korean president who declared martial law

Published

1 day ago

April 4, 2025

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Court confirms sacking of South Korean president who declared martial law

South Korea’s constitutional court has confirmed the dismissal of President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached in December after declaring martial law.

His decision to send troops onto the streets led to the country’s worst political crisis in decades.

The court ruled to uphold the impeachment saying the conservative leader “violated his duty as commander-in-chief by mobilising troops” when he declared martial law.

The president was also said to have taken actions “beyond the powers provided in the constitution”.

Supporters and opponents of the president gathered in their thousands in central Seoul as they awaited the ruling.

The 64-year-old shocked MPs, the public and international allies in early December when he declared martial law, meaning all existing laws regarding civilians were suspended in place of military law.

After suddenly declaring martial law, Mr Yoon sent hundreds of soldiers and police officers to the National Assembly.

He has argued that he sought to maintain order, but some senior military and police officers sent there have told hearings and investigators that Mr Yoon ordered them to drag out politicians to prevent an assembly vote on his decree.

His presidential powers were suspended when the opposition-dominated assembly voted to impeach him on 14 December, accusing him of rebellion.

The unanimous verdict to uphold parliament’s impeachment and remove Mr Yoon from office required the support of at least six of the court’s eight justices.

South Korea must hold a national election within two months to find a new leader.

Lee Jae-myung, leader of the main liberal opposition Democratic Party, is the early favourite to become the country’s next president, according to surveys.