Ecuadorian prosecutor investigating assault on TV channel was murdered

An anti-mafia prosecutor Ecuador who was investigating the assault by armed men on the TC television channel on January 9, was murdered this Wednesday in the city of Guayaquil, the Prosecutor’s Office reported.

The murder of prosecutor Carlos Suárez was confirmed by Attorney General Diana Salazar in a video posted on X (formerly Twitter).

“Given the murder of our colleague César Suárez (…) I am going to be emphatic: organized crime groups, criminals, terrorists will not stop our commitment to Ecuadorian society”said Salazar.

An official from the investigative body told AFP that Suárez had been in charge of determining which criminal group was behind the spectacular takeover in the middle of the broadcast of a program on the TC channel, during the recent crisis of drug-criminal violence in the country.

Local media broadcast images of the truck Suarez with several bullet holes in the driver’s window on an avenue.

A police official assured AFP that “The investigative units are carrying out the pertinent investigations to find those responsible” in the country’s main port, the center of drug trafficking operations.

Threats of death

The attack against the TC channel was one of the first criminal acts that Ecuador suffered after the escape of the powerful Adolfo Macías or “Fito”, head of the country’s main gang, confirmed on January 8.

It is still not clear who is behind that assault, in which hooded men threatened journalists and other workers with guns, rifles and grenades.

Faced with the crisis unleashed at that time, President Daniel Noboa declared the “internal armed conflict”, he called criminal gangs “terrorists” and deployed thousands of soldiers.

In several prisons, inmates held more than 100 prison officials until their release on Saturday.

The fiscal Salazar has reported death threats from Los Lobos, one of the main criminal organizations.

Ecuador was for many years a country safe from drug trafficking, but it has been transformed into a new bastion of drug trafficking to the United States and Europe with gangs fighting for control of the territory and united in their war against the State, especially in the port of Guayaquil.

In the last five years, the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants went from 6 to 46 in 2023 and the internal war bottoms out as it did in Colombia in the last century, but with an additional ingredient: burning prisons.