Mob that lynched Briton in Ecuador ‘too much for police to handle'

Times

22-04-2025

Ecuadorian police said 'everything humanly possible' was done to prevent a British man from being lynched and burnt alive by a village mob in the Amazon rainforest.
The Playas del Cuyabeno police claimed that 'the mob exceeded the capacity of seven police officers' tasked with protecting the visitor, who was believed to have moved from the UK and was killed in a revenge attack on Sunday.
The man, who has not been officially identified, was being held in a police station in the Sucumbios province of Ecuador on suspicion of shooting dead a man named locally as Rodrigo Chavez.
After reports of the alleged shooting, more than 100 local residents were seen storming the station hours later on April 20, dragging the man into the street and setting him on fire.
The police said: 'There had been problems between the two men that died. The man we believe to be British had shot a local man, causing his death.'
'We know that he was working and teaching English and was making reservations for tourists visiting the area,' a police chief added. 'But we don't have any more information right now and that is the focus of ongoing investigations, which are seeking to determine his full name as well.'
Officers arrested the British man at about 6am and reportedly took him to the station for his own safety, according to local media. They were awaiting the arrival of specialist government units to take him to Lago Agrio, the capital of the northeast province of Sucumbios, which is about 120km (75 miles) away, when the mob entered.
'We are still trying to establish the specific identity of the citizen we believe is a British national,' the police explained.
'We're presuming he's English, although we don't have documents that prove his nationality status. We're trying to confirm all the information including his migration status.
'We don't have any proven information relating to how long he had been in this community.'
Local news outlets described the killing as a 'shocking act of apparent community justice', and the group 'set him on fire until he died' in front of the police station.
Sucumbios was declared as falling into a state of emergency by officials last year after 159 killings took place in the province — a 70 per cent increase from the previous year.
The Foreign Office advised against all but essential travel to areas on the border between Ecuador and Colombia, due to 'the presence of organised crime linked to the production and trafficking of drugs'.
However, Playas del Cuyabeno, which is only accessible by river and is at least a 50km (31 miles) boat ride from the nearest urban area, has become a popular eco-tourism destination along the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve — the second largest of Ecuador's 56 national parks and protected areas.
The Foreign Office has said it is looking into the reports and working with local authorities to confirm details of the man's nationality.
The death came at the end of a Kichwa community event. The Kichwa people are the largest indigenous group in the Ecuadorian Amazon region, with a population of about 55,000.
Article 171 of the Ecuadorian constitution grants indigenous communities the authority to exercise jurisdictional powers within their territories, based on their ancestral traditions and laws, as long as they do not contradict national law or international human rights.
However, local media said that the lynching and murder of a person 'constitutes a crime under the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code and can be investigated by the prosecutor's office as homicide or murder'.