Armed and hooded men burst into the set of TC Television, a public television station in Guayaquil (southwest of Ecuador), on Tuesday January 9 in the afternoon, taking journalists and others hostage. employees, according to images broadcast live by this channel. The motives of the attackers are, for the moment, unknown.
“Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot!” »shouts a woman while shots are fired, while the attackers, equipped with pistols, shotguns and some with grenades, force the people present, terrified, to the ground. “Thanks to the intervention [dans les locaux] from TC Television, our police units have managed so far to arrest several subjects and [à saisir des] evidence related to the crime », communicated the Ecuadorian police on after having declared thatan evacuation of TV station workers was underway.
At the same time, the President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, declared his country in a state of “internal armed conflict” and ordered the “neutralization” criminal groups involved in drug trafficking, of which it provides an exhaustive list, according to a decree made public on Tuesday. This presidential decree orders “the mobilization and intervention of the armed forces and the national police (…) to guarantee sovereignty and national integrity against organized crime, terrorist organizations and non-state belligerents.”
“They came in to kill us”
In the images broadcast, one of the attackers is hooded, others wear hoods or caps. Still others have their faces uncovered or film themselves with their mobile phones, while several of them form with the fingers of both hands the usual signs of recognition of the criminal gangs linked to drug trafficking which are causing a reign of terror in Ecuador. Complaints are audible in the background. “They came in to kill us, my God protect us”sent one of the captive journalists to an Agence France-Presse correspondent, in a WhatsApp message.
With this new resounding incident, the results of which are still unknown, culminates a security crisis that nothing seems to be able to stem, after three days marked by the escape of a dangerous gang leader, cascading mutinies in the prisons, the proclamation of the state of emergency and the kidnapping of police officers in particular. “These are extremely difficult days”the executive having taken “the important decision to fight head-on against these terrorist threats”commented Tuesday the communications secretary of the presidency, Roberto Izurieta.
The crisis began on Sunday with the spectacular escape of Adolfo Macias, alias “Fito”, 44, the leader of the Choneros, a gang of around eight thousand men, according to experts, which has become the main actor in the thriving drug trade in Ecuador. Often described as public enemy number one, suspected of being involved in the resounding assassination of one of the main presidential candidates in August 2022, the man vanished from a high security establishment located in the vast complex in Guayaquil, where he had been serving a thirty-four-year prison sentence since 2011 for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder. He had already escaped from a high security prison in 2013 and was recaptured three months later.
His escape was followed by several mutinies and hostage-taking of guards in various prisons, all relayed by frightening videos broadcast on social networks showing the captives threatened by the knives of masked inmates.
State of emergency declared
The youngest president in the history of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, 36, declared a state of emergency for sixty days across the country on Monday. The army is thus authorized to maintain order in the streets (with a nighttime curfew) and prisons. With clearly little effect so far: seven police officers were kidnapped during the night from Monday to Tuesday. Explosions were also reported in an attack on a police station, the home of the President of the National Court and vehicles were set on fire. The local press mentioned a “night of terror” and one “failed state”.
A video posted on social networks shows three of the police officers kidnapped and forced, under threat of handguns, to read a message addressed to the head of state: “You declared war, you are going to have war (…). You have declared a state of emergency, we declare the police, civilians and military spoils of war. »
New humiliation on Tuesday, the authorities announced the escape of another drug trafficker, Fabricio Colon Pico, one of the leaders of Los Lobos, a criminal gang rivaling the Choneros. He was arrested Friday for the offense of kidnapping and for his alleged responsibility in a plot to assassinate the attorney general.
The government deplored a “infiltration level” criminal groups within the state ” very high “ and described the Ecuadorian prison system as” failure “. “We will not negotiate with terrorists and we will not stop until we have returned peace to all Ecuadorians”insisted President Noboa on Monday.
Prison guards sequestered
From Sunday, heavily armed police and soldiers entered several prisons, notably where guards were sequestered. Security forces released dramatic footage of the attacks, showing hundreds of detainees in their underwear, hands on their heads and unceremoniously forced to lie on the ground. The prison administration (SNAI) affirmed that no one was injured during these “incidents”.
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These images recall in every way the communication of the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, credited with having restored, thanks to his ” war “ against gangs, security in his country, however at the cost of restricting the rights of prisoners, according to human rights organizations.
Once a haven of peace, Ecuador has become a logistics center for shipping cocaine to the United States and Europe. The country is today ravaged by the violence of gangs and drug traffickers. The number of homicides increased by almost 800% between 2018 and 2023, going from six to forty-six per hundred thousand inhabitants.
The prisons, overcrowded and with more than 31,000 inmates, are regularly the scene of massacres between rival gangs, at least twelve since February 2021 which have left more than 460 inmates dead.