Ecuadorian judge opens trial for five of the six accused of Villavicencio’s murder

A judge of Ecuador decided this Wednesday to open a trial against five of the six accused by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the case of the murder of the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencioon which the main hypothesis of the crime falls on a faction of the criminal gang The Wolves.

Among the five defendants against whom the trial will take place are Carlos Edwin ALwhich is nicknamed ‘The invisible‘, accused as the direct author (with control of the fact) who allegedly gave the order to kill Villavicencio, and who is identified by the Ecuadorian authorities as the leader of the The Invisiblesa faction of Los Lobos.

LOOK HERE: Who gave the order to kill Fernando Villavicencio? This is how the crime was planned and executed, according to the Ecuador Prosecutor’s Office

They will also be in the dock Laura Dayanara’s CVas co-author, and Eric RP, Victor F. It is Alexandra Ch.F.as accomplices, while the judge Irene Perez ordered the extinction (archive) of the case to Oscar FTwho had also been accused as an accomplice, as reported by the Public Ministry via social media.

The decision to start the trial was given after the second day of the preparatory hearing, where the magistrate validated what the Public Prosecutor’s Office did during the investigation phase and addressed the formal accusation presented by the public ministry.

According to the Public Ministry, the order to kill Villavicencio came from the arrest of Latacungalocated in the Andean province of Cotopaxiabout 70 kilometers south of Quitoand controlled by Los Lobos until a month and a half ago, when the Armed forces to regain control of the prison.

The five accused and the one acquitted by the judge in this preparatory hearing for the trial are the only survivors of the fourteen allegedly involved in the crime, as eight of them are dead, including the seven Colombian gunmen who participated in the execution of the attack.

One of them, the same one who shot Villavicencio, died at the scene of the crime as a result of shots fired by the security team accompanying the candidate, while the other six were hanged weeks later in the Coastal Penitentiarythe largest and most populous prison in the world Ecuador.

Another person involved in the investigations also appeared dead in similar circumstances in a Quito prison.

Villavicencio was murdered on August 9, 2023, riddled with bullets as he left an electoral rally in Quito, when there were only eleven days until the first round of extraordinary general elections.

MORE INFORMATION: Sucamec states that the origin of the weapon used in the crime of a presidential candidate in Ecuador has not yet been determined

Although initially videos of groups of hooded armed men claiming the murder of Fernando Villavicencio in the name of Los Lobos, there were also other videos to the contrary, while days before the murder Villavicencio had reported death threats allegedly coming from the drug trafficker José Adolfo Macías ‘Fito’criminal gang leader The Choneros.

Villavicencio’s murder raised to unprecedented levels the growing wave of violence that has plagued Ecuador for around three years, with organized crime and drug trafficking mafias spiking the homicide rate to make the country one of the most violent in the world. country. Latin Americawith 45 homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants in 2023.

Since the beginning of January, both Los Lobos and twenty-one other criminal gangs, mainly dedicated to drug trafficking, have been considered terrorist groups, within the declaration of “internal armed conflict” that the current president did, Daniel Noboaagainst organized crime.

Source: Elcomercio

jack

I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.