10 January 2024 , 11:00
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A second rival drug lord has escaped from jail along with 38 other prisoners as chaos grips Ecuador.
President Daniel Noboa has admitted that there is an armed conflict involving drug gangs taking place within the country with the escape of cartel leader Fito last Sunday the fuse that has started the latest wave of violence.
The government introduced a state of emergency taking away civil liberties and allowing the army to enter prisons but control is far from being restored. There have been car bombs, police kidnapped in the street and threats made to the government by the gangs.
And President Noboa said that there was “a terrorist threat against the pillars of the sovereign state” around an hour after gunmen entered a television station in Guayaquil during a live transmission and threatened journalists.
The criminals hold up gang signs while taking a number of employees hostage at the TV station (TC)Following the escape of Fito, leader of the Choneros from a high security prison in Guayaquil, another gang boss Fabricio Colon Pico, alias The Savage, has also escaped along with 38 other prisoners from a jail in Riobamba, south of the capital Quito.
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He is a leader of the Lobos cartel that is seen as the most violent in the country. He was detained on January 5 having been accused of kidnap and also planning to kill state prosecutor Diana Salazar. Before he escaped from prison, he recorded a video message from his prison cell saying that Ms Salazar and the president would be responsible for killing him if they moved him, as was the intention, to another prison La Roca, due to rival gangs.
People leave the building where the TC television channel is based (AFP via Getty Images)There had been rallies in the streets against moving Colon Pico and following his escape a former director for social rehabilitation in Ecuador and expert on security, Alexandra Zumárraga, alleged on X that Colon Pico had allies in the police and was an “untouchable criminal”.
She claimed: “Fabricio for good reason has the alias ‘The Savage’, he comes from a family with crime in the genetics. He is not recoverable, he is the leader of a criminal gang in Quito that has assassins, thieves, pimps, drug traffickers and long criminal history.”
An Ecuadorean police squad enters the premises of Ecuador's TC television channel (AFP via Getty Images)The head of the forces Jaime Vela Erazo in a message to the country said that the drug gangs “had committed bloody acts without precedent in the history of the nation but that despite these attacks they will fail.” He added: “From this moment forward all the groups mentioned in the decree (listing 22 gangs) are military targets,” reported Infobae.com.
Meanwhile there has been no update by the government on Fito's disappearance and pressure is growing on the president with last year seeing a new record high of murders at 7,600 deaths.