The head of the Los Choneros gang in Ecuador, who was listed as the “most-wanted prisoner” by the police, vanished from the jail where he was being kept on Sunday, they claimed, and they began working to find him.
The national chief of police, General Cesar Zapata, announced during a news conference that one of the prisoners at the Guayaquil prison was missing, according to the country’s armed forces.
The prosecutor’s office stated it will look into “the alleged escape” of Los Choneros commander Jose Adolfo Macias, even though Zapata did not identify the prisoner by name.
Macias, whose alias is “Fito”, was sentenced in 2011 to 34 years in prison for various crimes including drug trafficking and murder.
Los Choneros is a criminal organization authorities have linked to extortion, murder and drug trafficking, among other crimes, and accused of controlling the country’s main prisons.
“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,” said presidential spokesman Roberto Izurieta at the press conference.
Rival criminal organizations frequently clash in Ecuador’s overcrowded prisons and official numbers show more than 400 inmates have died since 2021.
