Star Metro - Soldiers enter Ecuador jail in search for gang leader

Ecuador has been under a state of emergency after the shock assassination Wednesday of journalist and anti-corruption crusader Fernando Villavicencio.

President Guillermo Lasso has blamed the murder on organized crime, and Villavicencio had complained of receiving death threats from Jose Adolfo Macias, alias "Fito," the head of the powerful "Los Choneros" criminal group.

At dawn, heavily armed men in armored vehicles entered Prison 8 in Guayaquil in southwestern Ecuador, where "Fito" was serving his sentence.

Images of the operation published by President Lasso on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, show a big bearded man being handled by security guards and the same man lying facedown on the floor in his underwear along with several dozen other inmates.

The prison agency SNAI confirmed to AFP that the man is "Fito," held at that prison since 2011.

A week before the 59-year-old Villavicencio was killed, he had said that Fito was threatening him.

Villavicencio told a local program that an "emissary" of the gang leader had contacted him and warned "that if I continue... mentioning Los Choneros, they are going to break me."

"Fito" was sentenced to 34 years in prison for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.

Villavicencio drew the ire of gangs and drug traffickers for his investigations.

Six Colombians have been arrested in Villavicencio's murder, while a seventh was killed in a shootout with his bodyguards. Authorities haven't said who hired and paid the hitmen.

Prisons have become the center of operations for drug trafficking in Ecuador.

More than 430 inmates have died violently since 2021, dozens of them dismembered and incinerated amid disputes between rival gangs.

B.Cote--SMC