Operation to seize weapons, drugs and mobile phones in two prisons in Ecuador

Firearms, bullets and knives were found in two prisons in Ecuador intervened this Thursday by the National Police and the Armed Forces, in an operation carried out within the framework of the state of exception decreed since the end of July by the Government throughout the system. country’s penitentiary.

The prisons intervened this Thursday were the Litoral Penitentiary, the largest and most populated prison in Ecuador, which had already been intervened by the police and military previously on two occasions, and the Esmeraldas prison, capital of the province on the northern coast of the same border name with Colombia.

Eleven firearms, 1,665 bullets of various calibers, nine magazines, 200 knives and 10.8 kilos of substances suspected of being drugs were seized at the Penitentiary, according to the report released by the Joint Command of the Armed Forces.

Other prohibited objects were also seized inside the prison, such as 56 mobile phones, a communication radio and $715.

Meanwhile, in the Esmeraldas prison, 200 knives, a bullet magazine, fifteen bullets, ten clubs, 3.1 kilos of suspected narcotic substances, 280 mobile phones, two computers, six hard drives, some handcuffs, eight radios were found. communication and nine modems.

With this series of interventions in prison centers, the Government seeks to disarm the criminal gangs that internally control the prisons and who, due to rivalries, have murdered more than 400 prisoners since 2020 in a series of prison massacres.

While the Police and the Armed Forces carried out the interventions this Thursday, a video circulated on social networks of a group of young people with covered faces and heavily armed who identified themselves as the criminal gang “Los Tiguerones” and insulted and threatened the state authorities for this series of operations.

“Where you go into prisons to kill our brothers, and humiliate them, leaving them barefoot, without clothes, food or where to sleep, we are going to turn the streets upside down. Not only ‘Los Lobos’ can break them, we can too.” , the person reading a statement is allegedly heard saying.

The video and the voice of the speaker are very similar to another released hours after the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, where a group of hooded men with long weapons claimed to be “Los Lobos” and claimed responsibility for the attack, which later contrasted with other footage in which other men with uncovered faces also claimed to be “Los Lobos” and denied being behind the murder of Villavicencio.

The criminal gang “Los Lobos” is allegedly responsible for the series of car bombs and explosions that occurred at the end of August in various parts of the country due to the intervention carried out in the Latacunga prison, one of the prisons controlled by this group. where prisoners were also transferred to other prisons, such as that of the leader of “Los Lobos” Luis Arboleda, nicknamed “Gordo Luis.”

The series of car bombs and explosions was also accompanied by riots in at least six prisons where inmates took more than fifty prison guards and police hostage for about two days, until they were released.

Source