Infamous gang chief has agreed to be extradited to the US to face cocaine and weapons smuggling fees.
Ecuador’s most notorious drug lord has agreed to be extradited to the US to face cocaine and weapons smuggling fees, a courtroom within the capital Quito has mentioned.
The announcement on Friday is the social media chapter within the dramatic underworld story of Adolfo Macias, alias “Fito”, who was recaptured in June after escaping from a most safety jail 18 months in the past in a jailbreak that triggered a bloody wave of gang violence.
Macias, head of the “Los Choneros” gang, is needed within the US on fees of cocaine distribution, conspiracy and firearms-related crimes, together with weapons smuggling.
After Macias vanished from his jail cell within the southwestern port of Guayaquil in January 2024, authorities had been scouring the world for him, providing a $1m reward for info resulting in his seize. However it emerged that the nation’s most needed man was hiding out at a member of the family’s mansion in his hometown.
Ecuadorian safety forces recaptured the drug kingpin final month at an underground bunker beneath a marble-walled home within the port metropolis of Manta, some 260km (160 miles) southwest of the capital, Quito.
The previous taxi-driver-turned-crime-boss had been serving a 34-year sentence since 2011 for involvement in organised crime, drug trafficking and homicide.
In a rustic tormented by drug-related crime, Los Choneros members responded with violence because the manhunt started after their chief’s escape – utilizing automotive bombs, holding jail guards hostage and storming a tv station throughout a dwell broadcast.
President Daniel Noboa’s right-wing authorities had just lately declared, “We’ll gladly ship him and let him reply to the North American regulation.”
Macias, wearing an orange jail uniform, took half in a courtroom listening to Friday by way of videolink from a high-security jail in Guayaquil.
In response to a decide’s query, he replied, “Sure, I settle for (extradition).”
This may make Macias the primary Ecuadorian extradited by his nation because the measure was written into regulation final 12 months, after a referendum wherein Noboa sought the approval of measures to spice up his warfare on felony gangs.
Ecuador, as soon as a peaceable haven wedged between the world’s two prime cocaine exporters, Colombia and Peru, has seen violence erupt lately as rival gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for management.
These gang wars have largely performed out contained in the nation’s prisons, the place Macias wielded immense management. He was the unofficial boss of his Guayaquil jail, the place authorities discovered photos glorifying him, weapons and US {dollars}.
Movies of events he held within the jail captured fireworks and a mariachi band. In a single sequence, he appeared waving, laughing and petting a combating rooster.
Macias earned a regulation diploma behind bars. By the point he escaped, he was thought of a suspect within the assassination of presidential candidate and anticorruption crusader Fernando Villavicencio in 2023.
Quickly after Macias’s jail break, Noboa declared Ecuador to be in a state of “inside armed battle” and ordered the navy and tanks into the streets to “neutralize” the gangs.
Los Choneros has ties to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Colombia’s Gulf Clan – the world’s largest cocaine exporter – and Balkan mafias, based on the Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory.
Greater than 70 % of all cocaine produced on the earth now passes by means of Ecuador’s ports, based on authorities knowledge. In 2024, the nation seized a report 294 tonnes of medication, primarily cocaine.