President of Ecuador requests resignation of Interior Minister after murder of lawyer

First modification: 09/24/2022 – 14:57

President Lasso through a television message announced yesterday that “General Patricio Carrillo has dedicated his life and his loyalty to the ideal of a safe country. However, after the events of the last few days, I have decided that her service ends today.” The president, who described the murder of the 34-year-old lawyer as “femicide,” added that he asked Carrillo “for his resignation as Minister of the Interior”.

Earlier, the president – who returned to Ecuador tonight after participating in the UN General Assembly – ordered the dismissal of two police generals and called for the resignation of the police high command.

“I have asked the police officers to make their positions available, presenting their respective discharges. The National Government will assess their permanence in the institution,” Lasso wrote on his Twitter account.

According to the president, these are Freddy Goyes, who served as the national director of investigation of the Judicial Police, and Giovanni Ponce, head of Citizen Security and Public Order.

The announcements come after the discovery of the body of lawyer María Belén Bernal, who disappeared on September 11 after entering the Police High School (ESP) to visit her husband, Lieutenant Germán Cáceres, who is considered a murder suspect. and he is on the run. The body was found this Wednesday on a hill near the officers’ school, located on the outskirts of Quito.

“These decisions are only the first step in the long road ahead of us to transform our national police and heal as a country,” Lasso said on the radio and television network.

In another part of his message, Lasso apologized for this fact, noting that “This should never happen, much less in a public building where those who must protect are trained.”

Suspect Search

The president also gave the Commander General of the Police, Fausto Salinas, a period of “one week to deliver definitive results that lead to the capture of Germán Cáceres”, the main suspect in the crime.

After learning of the request for the resignation of the heads of the Police, Salinas pointed out that on Monday the members of the police command will make their “charges available.”

Bernal’s murder once again set off alarms in the country due to femicides, which according to social organizations total at least 206 so far in 2022. According to the Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office, 573 femicides have been registered since 2014. Since that year, Femicide was included as a crime in the Ecuadorian Penal Code.

Bernal, 34, was buried on Friday. A march led by her mother, Elizabeth Otavalo, who accompanied the coffin to a cemetery in the north of the Ecuadorian capital. Relatives and activists carried photographs of the lawyer and her husband, for which the government offers up to a $20,000 reward for those who turn in information.

Bernal’s mother has branded the case a “state crime”, considering that her daughter died inside a police institution.