Daniel Noboa: Ecuador re-elects president with controversial approach to tackling gang crime
Ecuador has re-elected Daniel Noboa as president – a conservative millionaire with a controversial no-holds-barred approach to tackling gang crime.
Mr Noboa’s opponent, leftist lawyer Luisa Gonzalez, has vowed to seek a recount over what she described as “grotesque” electoral fraud.
Figures released by Ecuador’s National Electoral Council indicate Mr Noboa received 55.8% of the vote with more than 90% of ballots counted, while Ms Gonzalez earned 44%.
The vote was monitored by international observers from the European Union and the Organization of American States, but neither had released their official reports at the time of writing.
Diana Atamaint, president of the council, said on national television that those results showed an “irreversible trend” in favour of Mr Noboa.
The win gives the 37-year-old president four years to fulfil promises he first made in 2023 – when he won a snap election and secured a 16-month presidency despite having limited political experience.
Daniel Noboa addresses supporters after early returns showed him in the lead in the presidential election run-off. Pic: AP
More than 13 million people were eligible to vote in the South American country, where voting is mandatory.
Ms Gonzalez’s defeat marks the third consecutive time that the party of Rafael Correa, the country’s most influential president this century, failed to return to the presidency.
She told supporters her campaign “does not recognise the results presented by the “(National Electoral Council),” arguing, among other issues, that pre-election polls showed her ahead of Mr Noboa.
Daniel Noboa addresses the media in Santa Elena, Ecuador, as the electoral council says he has won the election.
Pic: Reuters
Luisa Gonzalez addresses supporters during the presidential election in Quito, Ecuador.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Noboa, heir to a fortune built on the banana trade, is expected to continue applying some of his heavy-handed crimefighting strategies that part of the electorate finds appealing but which have tested the limits of laws and norms of governing.
Ecuador faces a challenge because of the involvement on its soil of two of Mexico’s most notorious and powerful drugs cartels – Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation.
The cartels realised that Ecuador – which is not a cocaine producing country – had excellent ports with speedy routes north by sea to Central and North America.
Mr Noboa declared Ecuador to be in a state of “internal armed conflict” in January 2024, allowing him to deploy thousands of soldiers to the streets to combat gangs and charge people with terrorism counts for alleged ties to organised crime groups.
In the weeks that followed, Ecuador’s security forces carried out raid after raid, rounding up people they claimed were linked to drug gangs.
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From February 2024: Ecuador’s cartel crackdown
The country’s prisons filled up with new inmates, and some prisons, notorious for their lack of discipline and control, were taken over by the military, completely changing the dynamic inside and the freedom of the gang leaders to continue their business activities while locked up.
However, during the crackdown there have also been reports of human rights violations, with the security forces having carried out extrajudicial killings and arbitrary arrests, according to Human Rights Watch.
A supporter of Mr Noboa carries his cardboard cut-out as she celebrates his victory. Pic: Reuters
Supporters of Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa celebrate in Quito, Ecuador. Pic: Reuters
Under Mr Noboa’s watch, the homicide rate dropped from 46.18 per 100,000 people in 2023, to 38.76 per 100,000 people in 2024.
But despite the decrease, the rate remained far higher than the 6.85 homicides per 100,000 people seen in 2019.
Ecuadorian voters were primarily worried about the violence that has transformed the country, starting in 2021.
Both candidates promised tough-on-crime policies, better equipment for law enforcement and international help to fight drug cartels and local criminal groups.
The candidates had advanced to Sunday’s contest after getting the most votes in February’s first-round election.
Mr Noboa led Ms Gonzalez by around 17,000 votes.
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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UK aims to build relationship with Syria
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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