Ecuador's most wanted drug lord recaptured after 18 months on the run

UPI

6 hours ago

Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar 'Fito' (C) arrives back in Guayaquil, Ecuador, under heavy armed guard on Wednesday after being recaptured 120 miles away in the port city of Manta. Photo by Maurico Torres/EPA
June 26 (UPI) -- Ecuadorian authorities arrested the leader of the notorious Los Choneros drug gang after 18 months on the run following a prison break that unleashed a wave of violence across the Central American country, forcing President Daniel Noboa to declare a 60-day state of emergency.
In a post on X late Wednesday, Noboa said that the recapture of Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, known as "Fito," was vindication of controversial emergency powers granted to him by lawmakers last week and that he now wanted to hand Fito him over to the United States where he is wanted on cocaine trafficking charges.
"To those who opposed and doubted the need for the Solidarity and Intelligence laws: thanks to those laws, Fito was captured today and is in the hands of the Security Block. More will fall, we will reclaim the country. No truce. We have done our part to proceed with Fito's extradition to the United States, we are awaiting their response," said Noboa.
Fito, who is suspected of ordering the killing of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio ahead of elections in 2023, was pulled from a bunker hidden beneath an upscale villa in the coastal city of Manta following a stakeout by security forces.
He was flown back to Guayaquil and is being held in the city's La Roca maximum-security prison where he had been due to be transferred prior to escaping in January 2024.
The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Fito in February 2024, a month after Ecuador was rocked by prison riots and gang killings, kidnappings and bombings after Noboa imposed a state of emergency after Fito escaped from Guayaquil Regional Prison, where he was serving a 34-year sentence for a string of crimes, including murder.
Officials said they were extremely concerned about the situation in the country, citing an armed attack on a local TV station while it was live on air, the subsequent assassination of the prosecutor assigned to investigate the incident, and rampant corruption.
Violence had been further fueled, they said, by Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion using rival Ecuadorian drug trafficking gangs as proxies as they fought it out for domination of trafficking routes in the country.
Earlier, the U.S. State Department offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of "remaining unknown coconspirators" responsible for Villavicencio's murder in a shooting at a campaign event in Quito on Aug. 9, 2023, that injured nine other people.
An additional reward of up to $1 million was offered for information leading to the identification and location of leaders of the transnational gang responsible for Villavicencio's murder after a Colombian, believed to be the assassin, was detained after being shot by police but died of his injuries.
In March 2024, Brigitte García, 27, Ecuador's youngest mayor, was found shot dead inside a vehicle in a remote spot alongside an aide. Elected mayor of the small coastal city of San Vicente in 2023, Garcia's killing sparked a public outcry.
The U.S. National Security Council, Homeland Security, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, FBI and Defense Department have all been involved in U.S. efforts to quell an explosion in violence by armed gangs that has seen Ecuador go from being a tranquil tourist hotspot to a country with one of the highest murder rates in Latin America.
The security council designated funding to combat the gangs with assistance to build an Ecuadorian Coast Guard Academy, a canine veterinary clinic, an office for the corruption prosecution unit and eight mobile border units to support an elite border task force.
Homeland Security sent a 175-strong team to train the Ecuadorian border officers, trained up 35 members of the close-protection details responsible for the security of the president and vice-president and provided support for targeting organized crime networks with digital forensics services.
The FBI ramped up its presence in the country in response to the surging violence, while the Pentagon committed a C-130H military transport, on top of 20,000 bulletproof vests and more than $1 million of emergency response announced by the then-Biden administration in January 2024.