Ecuador’s most wanted criminal, leader of the Los Choneros criminal group, Jose Adolfo Macias, fled from jail where he was serving his sentence for drug trafficking and murder.
Known by his alias Fito, Macias was imprisoned in 2011 and given a 34-year sentence, as reported by Reuters.
Police in Ecuador reportedly have launched a massive manhunt with the operation involving more than 3,000 members of the law enforcement agencies.
In a statement given by the presidential spokesman Roberto Izurieta at the press conference, he said: “We’re grateful for the courage and commitment of the law enforcement forces, who, in an operation involving more than 3,000 people, have intervened in the prison in search of the most-wanted prisoner.”
Macias was arrested after the Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was killed in August last year following a rally in the country’s capital of Quito, he had accused Los Choneros and Macias, whom he linked to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, of threatening him and his campaign team days before the assassination.
According to his campaign manager Villavicencio received at least three death threats in the lead-up to the fatal shooting.
Macias was moved into a maximum-security facility, three days after Villavicencio’s assassination.
Los Choneros criminal group has been connected to extortion, murder, and drug trafficking crimes in Ecuador and also has been accused of controlling some of the country’s prisons.
Official numbers show that more than 400 inmates have died since 2021 due to clashes between rival criminal groups in Ecuador’s overcrowded prisons.
