Police tracked him down to what they described as an underground bunker below a luxury home in the city of Manta. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
A police spokesman said no shots were fired in the 10-hour joint operation by police and the military. <\/p>\n
A large number of officers first monitored and surrounded the three-storey home in the Monterrey neighbourhood of Manta, on the Ecuadorian coast. <\/p>\n
When they stormed the building, they found a sliding trap door, disguised to look like part of the stone floor, from which metal stairs led to Fito’s underground hideout. <\/p>\n
The “bunker” was fitted out with air conditioning, a bed, a fan and a fridge.<\/p>\n
The house itself boasted a gym with a punching bag and a games room where he could play pool and table football. <\/p>\n
Fito reportedly put up no resistance and was transferred by air to the port city of Guayaquil, where several of Ecuador’s largest prisons are located.<\/p>\n
Footage of his arrival in Guayaquil shows him wearing shorts, a T-shirt and flip flops while being led by armed security officers to a parked SUV before being transfered to the La Roca maximum-security prison.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Mauricio Torres\/EPA<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nFito has escaped from prison twice before so security was high<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n\n
Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa praised the security forces for capturing Fito and said that he would be extradited to the US, where he has been charged with cocaine smuggling.<\/p>\n
Fito escaped from La Regional prison in Guayaquil in January 2024 with the help of at least two guards, prompting global media attention.<\/p>\n
It triggered a wave of deadly prison riots, in which guards were taken hostage and which prompted Noboa to declare a state of emergency.<\/p>\n
But Fito was already notorious prior to his escape. During his time in prison – while serving a 34-year sentence for murder and drug trafficking – he rose to the top of the Los Choneros gang after its previous leader was killed. <\/p>\n
From behind bars, he co-ordinated the gang’s activities, which include drug trafficking and extortion.<\/p>\n
He is also suspected of having ordered the murder of politician Fernando Villavicencio, who was gunned down at a campaign rally just days before the 2023 election. <\/p>\n
Under Fito’s leadership, Los Choneros forged links with Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel, an alliance which experts say has led to the gruesome tactics commonly used by Mexican cartels – such as decapitations and mutilations – spreading to Ecuador. <\/p>\n
Shortly before his prison escape, he also appeared in a narcocorrido – a slick music video in which his daughter glorifies her father’s criminal exploits.<\/p>\n
The video, which was partly recorded inside the prison, shows him caressing a fighting cockerel and freely chatting to fellow inmates.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
The gang leader’s escape in 2024 was a blow to Noboa’s government. The Ecuadorian leader had assumed office in November 2023 after being elected on a promise to combat the growing power of the gangs.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Noboa said that the drug lord’s capture was proof his approach – which includes bringing in laws giving him sweeping powers to declare an “armed internal conflict”, and which allows police to conduct searches without a warrant – was working.<\/p>\n
“More [drug lords] will fall, we will regain [control of] the country,” he posted on X.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vanessa Buschschl\u00fcter Latin America editor, BBC News Online MAURICIO TORRES\/EPA Adolfo Mac\u00edas Villamar was taken to a maximum-security jail Police in Ecuador have recaptured the country’s most wanted fugitive, drug lord Adolfo Mac\u00edas Villamar. Mac\u00edas, also known by the alias “Fito”, is the leader of Los Choneros, a powerful criminal gang which is blamed for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31888,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31886\/revisions\/31888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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MAURICIO TORRES\/EPA<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n![](\"https:\/\/static.files.bbci.co.uk\/bbcdotcom\/web\/20250616-143050-043f96f72f-web-2.23.1-5\/grey-placeholder.png\")
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