Ecuador: Gang-ruled prisons, assassinated politicians and a drug lord’s killing
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…
Prisoners stand on the roof of the Turi jail Cuenca earlier this week. Pic: AP
‘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.
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Footage shows moments before presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot and killed.
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.
Prisoners shout from a rooftop demanding the release of Los Choneros leader Adolfo Macias, known as Fito
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.
Police officers and soldiers detain two men outside a prison who were supporting inmates protesting for the return of a drug cartel leader. Pic: AP
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.
The fast-moving developments on Trump’s Ukraine peace deal are dominating the G20 summit in South Africa, as European leaders scramble to put together a counter-proposal to the US-Russia 28-point plan and reinsert Ukraine into these discussions.
European countries are now working up proposals to put to President Trump ahead of his deadline of Thursday to agree a deal.
Ukraine is in a tight spot. It cannot reject Washington outright – it relies on US military support to continue this war – but neither can it accept the terms of a deal that is acutely favourable to Russia, requiring Ukraine to give up territory not even occupied by Moscow and reducing its army.
Overnight, the UK government has reiterated its position that any deal must deliver a “just and lasting peace”.
Ukraine war latest: Kyiv to discuss ending war in talks in Switzerland
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Keir Starmer calls for growth plan at G20
The prime minister, who spoke with E3 allies President Macron of France, Chancellor Merz of Germany and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine on the phone on Friday, is having more conversations today with key partners as they work out how to handle Trump and improve this deal for Ukraine.
One diplomatic source told me allies are being very careful not to criticise Trump or his approach for fear of exacerbating an already delicate situation.
Instead, the prime minister is directing his attacks at Russia.
Read more:
Trump’s 28-point Ukraine peace plan in full
Analysis: We could all pay if Europe doesn’t guarantee Ukraine’s security
Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends a plenary session on the first day of the G20 Leaders’ Summit. Pic: Reuters
“There is only one country around the G20 table that is not calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine and one country that is deploying a barrage of drones and missiles to destroy livelihoods and murder innocent civilians,” he said on Friday evening.
“Time and again, Russia pretends to be serious about peace, but its actions never live up to its words.”
Pic: AP
On the Trump plan, the prime minister said allies are meetin on Saturday “to discuss the current proposal on the table, and in support of Trump’s push for peace, look at how we can strengthen this plan for the next phase of negotiations”.
Strengthening the plan really means that they want to rebalance it towards Ukraine’s position and make it tougher on Russia.
“Ukraine has been ready to negotiate for months, while Russia has stalled and continued its murderous rampage. That is why we must all work together with both the US and Ukraine, to secure a just and lasting peace once and for all,” said the prime minister.
“We will continue to coordinate closely with Washington and Kyiv to achieve that. However, we cannot simply wait for peace.
“We must strain every sinew to secure it. We must cut off Putin’s finance flows by ending our reliance on Russian gas. It won’t be easy, but it’s the right thing to do.”
Pic: AP
Europeans hadn’t even seen this deal earlier in the week, in a sign that the US is cutting other allies out of negotiations – for now at least.
Starmer and other European leaders want to get to a position where Ukraine and Europe are at least at the table.
There is some discussion about whether European leaders such as Macron and Meloni might travel to Washington to speak to Trump early next week in order to persuade him of the European and Ukrainian perspective, as leaders did last August following the US-Russian summit in Alaska.
But Sky News understands there are no discussions about the PM travelling to Washington next week ahead of the budget.
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