“The most wanted prisoner in Ecuador”, the leader of the Los Choneros gang, has escaped from the prison where he was held, the authorities announced on Sunday, which began the operation to find him.
General Cesar Zapata, head of the National Police, said in a press conference that the National Army has determined that one of the detainees in the Guayaquil prison is missing. Although Zapata did not name the arrestee, the prosecutor’s office said it would open an investigation. “The so-called escape” by José Adolfo Macias, leader of Los Choneros. Macias, whose pseudonym is “Fito,” was sentenced in 2011 to 34 years in prison for various crimes, including drug trafficking and murder.
Los Choneros is a gang linked to, among other things, extortion, murder and drug trafficking, and is accused of controlling the country’s largest prison. “We appreciate the courage and commitment of the police who, in an operation involving more than 3,000 people, intervened in the prison in search of the most wanted prisoner,” the spokesman for the president, Roberto Izurieta, told reporters. conference.
Rival gangs have repeatedly fought in Ecuador’s overcrowded prisons and government figures show more than 400 inmates have died since 2021.
