By Socalj 8/12/2023 04:59:00 PM
"Socalj" for Borderland Beat
The six suspects arrested in connection with the assassination of a Presidential candidate in Ecuador are Colombian nationals, Ecuador’s interior minister, Juan Zapata, said Thursday, marking another twist in a killing that has rocked a nation consumed by violence fueled by drug trafficking.
The candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, a former journalist who had been outspoken about the link between organized crime and government officials, was gunned down outside a high school in the capital, Quito, after speaking to young supporters. The attack came just days before voting begins in an election that has been dominated by concerns over drug-related violence. A suspect was killed in the melee that followed, and nine other people were shot, officials said.
Mr. Villavicencio, 59, was polling near the middle of an eight-person race. He was among the most vocal candidates on the issue of crime and state corruption.
It was the first assassination of a presidential candidate in Ecuador, once a relatively safe nation, and came less than a month after the mayor of Manta, a port city, was fatally shot during a public appearance.
. . .
Former Colombian President Ernesto Samper expressed worry about the news of the Colombian nationality of the murderers of candidate Villavicencio. "It coincides with the murder of the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, and the former guerrilla leaders of the FARC in Venezuela, carried out by suspicious paramilitary commandos”, he stated.
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Two months before this assassination, the former journalist demanded that the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, solve the problem of drug trafficking since those criminal organizations had expanded to Ecuador.
On June 8, he posted a video on his Facebook stating that the Sinaloa Cartel and the CJNG were responsible for the criminal activity in the country.
“Our country is the biggest victim of the criminal operations of the biggest drug mafias in the world. But those mafias and those cartels are not Ecuadorian. It is not that they flourished in the beautiful town of Chone or in Esmeraldas; the mafias are from Mexico: Sinaloa, Jalisco Nueva Generación, and now the Albanian mafia,” Villavicencio asserted.
He stated that the industrialization of cocaine is carried out in Colombia, and the criminal groups use Ecuador as a transit territory for the storage and export of drugs. "We are not going to allow organized crime managed by these schools of hitmen, of drug criminals from Colombia and Mexico, to continue claiming innocent victims in this country," he asserted.
More:
https://www.borderlandbeat.com/2023/08/6-colombians-arrested-in-relation-to.html
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