A protected witness in the case of the murder of an Ecuadorian presidential candidate declared on Tuesday on the first day of the trial that because the death of Fernando Villavicencio 200,000 dollars were paid and that behind it was the criminal gang Los Lobos, considered by the United States to be the largest drug trafficking organization in the country.
The trial for the murder of Villavicencio Last year, days before the vote, it began on Tuesday and in the first hours of the hearing, police officers appeared and intervened immediately after the crime.
The most notable was the statement of a protected witness, identified by the prosecution as José Patricio AM, who asserted that he participated in the initial planning of the murder but that he refused to be part of the execution.
According to the prosecution, in a message on (from Villavicencio) was worth 200,000 dollars and the government of Rafael C. (Correa) ordered him to do it (kill).”
The Public Ministry has not reported so far that there are open lines of investigation against the former Ecuadorian president or against his collaborators in this case.
The authorities have not yet identified the intellectual authors of the Villavicencio crime, who had denounced links between politics and organized crime. He had also claimed to have received threats from criminal groups.
The same witness said that the criminal gang Los Lobos organized Villavicencio’s murder.
He mentioned that those who wanted to assassinate him considered that “if he became president he would change the results of drugs and they would change the sentencing codes.”
Villavicencio was murdered on August 9 last year shot at the exit of an electoral event in Quito, days before the first round of the elections that the current president Daniel Noboa ended up winning, in a crime that shook the country.
The 59-year-old politician was also an assembly member and a figure recognized for having denounced various cases of corruption that led to ministers and other high officials in prison, especially from the government of former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
A month after the crime, seven of the 13 detainees were murdered inside prisons in Guayaquil and Quito, where they were in preventive detention.
Relatives and friends of the politician have held protests in front of the Court to demand speed in the judicial process.
The prosecution too reported in
In the attack, another 13 people were wounded by gunshots.
For the murder of Villavicencio, among others, Carlos Angulo, one of the leaders of Los Lobos, whom the prosecution attributes to being the coordinator of the crime, as well as Laura Castillo, accused of co-authorship for delivering vehicles, weapons and weapons to the attackers, will be prosecuted. money, and three other people identified as accomplices.
If found guilty, the defendants could receive a sentence of between 22 and 26 years in prison.
According to the Prosecutor’s thesis, Angulo, in his capacity as leader of a faction of the criminal group that operated in the south of the capital, was the organizer of the crime, which was recorded in messages to cell phones.
“Listening to the experts’ story when they talk about the autopsy and what the trajectory of the bullet was like is very powerful, but you have to focus on what is important and discover the intellectual authors of Fernando’s death,” he told AP Verónica Sarauz, widow of Villavicencio.
He added that “for the good of society and the country, we hope that the Prosecutor’s Office does its job well and finds those responsible.”
Strong police guard was installed very early on outside and in the access corridors to the National Court of Justice, carefully checking each person who entered the premises.
Villavicencio was one of the eight candidates registered for the August presidential race but was not among the favorites.
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