President Daniel Noboa, in office since November, announced a 60-day mobilisation of soldiers in Ecuador’s streets and prisons as a manhunt was underway for gangster Jose Adolfo Macias, alias “Fito.”
There would also be a curfew from 11:00 pm to 5:00 am daily, the president said.
The state of emergency, Noboa said in a video on Instagram, would give members of the armed forces “all the political and legal support” they need to carry out their duties in a battle against what he described as “narco-terrorists.”
“We will not negotiate with terrorists nor rest until we return peace to all Ecuadorans,” said Noboa.
On Sunday, the leader of the powerful Los Choneros gang was found missing by police conducting an inspection of a prison in the port city of Guayaquil.
The 44-year-old, who is said to have instilled terror in his fellow inmates, is believed to have escaped just hours before police arrived, according to presidency spokesman Roberto Izurieta. He was tipped off.
“The full force of the state is being deployed to find this extremely dangerous individual,” Izurieta told domestic TV Monday.
He said the prison system had failed and bemoaned “the level of infiltration” by criminal groups.
The prosecutor’s office, meanwhile, said it had opened an investigation and filed charges against two prison officials “allegedly involved in the escape” of Fito.
The gang leader had been serving a 34-year sentence for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder since 2011.
This is his second prison escape — the last was in 2013 when he was recaptured after three months.
In an operation involving thousands of security forces, Fito was transferred to a maximum security prison last August following the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
A week before his death, anti-cartel candidate Villavicencio said he had received threats from Fito.
Long a peaceful haven between top cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has seen violence explode in recent years as enemy gangs with links to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.
Gang wars largely play out in the country’s prisons, where criminal leaders such as Fito wield immense control.
The battles have left some 460 inmates dead since 2021, their bodies often found dismembered, decapitated or incinerated.
Izurieta said Fito — who studied law in prison — was a “criminal with extremely dangerous characteristics, whose activities have characteristics of terrorism.”
“The search continues… He will be found, he must be found,” said the spokesman.
After his flight, unrest broke out at penitentiaries in six of Ecuador’s 24 provinces Monday, according to the SNAI prison authority, with guards taken hostage at some of the facilities.
Heavily armed police and soldiers entered the prisons of El Oro, Loja, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Azuay and Pichincha, after which the military distributed images of half-naked inmates rounded up in courtyards.
The SNAI said there had been no injuries due to the “incidents.”
