The “war” declared by the president of Ecuador Daniel Noboa against organized crime gangs continued this Thursday for the third consecutive day, with the president determined to build two ‘Bukele model’ prisons for the leaders of these mafias who riots have been going on in seven prisons since Tuesday with 175 officials held inside.

Fear of new attacks and violent acts still persists in the streets, such as those that occurred on Tuesday, which included the kidnapping and murder of police officers, the explosion and burning of cars, and the armed assault on a television station in the city of Guayaquil. After the declaration of the “internal armed conflict” and the categorization of the main criminal gangs in the country as terrorist groups and military objectives to be neutralized, military patrols carry out checks on passers-by and cars in search of “terrorists.”

Under this climate, and with a simple statement and video statement, Noboa presented some brief plans of the two prisons that his administration is contemplating building similar to those that are already operational in Mexico or El Salvador to combat gangs and mafias. organized crime. Although a few weeks ago Noboa indicated that The prisons would be designed by the same company that made the ‘megaprison’ of El Salvadorthis was not specified in the announcement made this Thursday nor the expected start date of the works.

These two new prisons, which will be located in the Amazon province of Pastaza and the coastal province of Santa Elena, will have capacity for 736 prisoners, far from the 40,000 inmates that the Government of President Nayib Bukele claims its prison can house. Both venues will have cellular and satellite signal inhibition, electronic systems with cutting-edge technology, digital and analog access control, triple perimeter security and electrical self-generation, unprecedented aspects in current Ecuadorian prisons.

In these two prisons, Noboa intends to imprison the leaders of the criminal gangs in order to regain control of the rest of the prisons, many of them internally dominated by these criminal groups, presumably behind the series of riots in the prisons and violence in the streets. . This has allegedly provoked the violent reaction of these gangs, to which the series of prison massacres in which Since 2020, more than 450 prisoners have been murderedand also seems to have motivated the escape of José Adolfo Macías ‘Fito’, the leader of ‘Los Choneros’, one of the largest groups.

The Government’s plan was to isolate ‘Fito’, who dominated the Guayaquil Regional Prison , and other leaders of these gangs in facilities such as the maximum security prison of La Roca until these two prisons were completed. Until this Thursday, the riots continued in the prisons of the southern cities of Machala, Loja, Cuenca and Azogues, the central Latacunga and Ambato and the northern Esmeraldas, with a total of 178 officials held inside, including 158 guards and 20 administrative personnel.

At the end of the day, three of them were released in Esmeraldas and Cuenca. During this Thursday, several detainees for the attacks and violent acts that occurred on Tuesday were sent to preventive detention on charges of terrorism, including the alleged mastermind of the murder of two police officers, two suspects of kidnapping three agents and a group of fifteen men who allegedly planned to release prisoners from the Ambato prison. Seven people were also arrested in the northern province of Imbabura related to the alleged preparation of car bombs with dynamite of Peruvian origin, according to the Ecuadorian Police.

In this context, the Ecuadorian Government announced that it will begin to require a criminal record certificate from foreigners who enter the country through the borders of Colombia and Peru. More than 38 countries have offered help to Ecuador to resolve this crisis, as noted this Thursday in a radio interview by Noboa, who assured that his country needs military assistance. “We need military support in terms of people, soldiers, as well as assistance in intelligence, artillery and equipment,” he said on the FM Mundo radio station.

Several senior United States officials will visit Ecuador in the coming weeks to deepen cooperation in the fight against organized crime and increase the exchange of intelligence information, the State Department announced this Thursday. In turn, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility, Gabriela Sommerfeld, traveled to Washington to present the situation to the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) and debate the adoption of a declaration entitled ‘Defense of democracy, sovereignty and peace in the Republic of Ecuador’.

For the expert in special operations and lieutenant colonel of the Ecuadorian Police in passive service Rodrigo Braganza, “more violent events are going to come”. “The Government has to remain firm in the decisions it has made; train and equip the Police and the Armed Forces and give them the dignity they require,” he concluded.