2023-08-13 17:01:05
Friends and supporters of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, a critic of corruption and organized crime, react during a post-mortem tribute at the Quito Exhibition Center, after Villavicencio was assassinated during a campaign rally, in Quito, Ecuador, August 11, 2023. (Archyde.com)
“The FBI delegation is already in the country.” assured Juan Zapata, Minister of the Interior. The official added that the team will meet with the State Attorney General’s Office to determine the scope of support in the investigation into the murder of Fernando Villavicencio.
The FBI commission “has made contact with the national Police” and in the next few hours a “tripartite” meeting will be held with the State Attorney General’s Office, which is the head of the investigation in the case, Zapata said.
The minister added that this meeting will determine “the scope of collaboration and support” that the FBI will give in the investigation of the crime, whose participation was requested by the Ecuadorian president himself, the conservative Guillermo Lasso.
Zapata announced that, if the Prosecutor’s Office so defines it, the FBI could support the “exploitation” or extraction of the information contained in several mobile phones seized during the first police actions after the shooting against the presidential candidate.
Villavicencio was one of the eight presidential candidates who were running in the extraordinary general elections scheduled for the next day 20 in which the successor to the conservative Guillermo Lasso will be elected.
The 59-year-old candidate, a journalist and former member of the National Assembly who with his investigations into corruption had become one of the staunchest enemies of former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017), received a burst of shots at the end of a meeting of his electoral campaign that he carried out in a school in Quito last Wednesday.
The Minister of the Interior of Ecuador, Juan Zapata Silva
President Lasso decreed a state of emergency for 60 days throughout the country and ratified that the extraordinary general elections will be held on August 20, as planned, but with a deployment of the military throughout the national territory.
The lack of a bulletproof vest and the unarmored vehicle are some of Verónica Sarauz’s criticisms of Fernando Villavicencio’s safety.
For a little over two years, multiple reports of murders, massacres, extortions, attacks with explosives, among other crimes, have been reproduced daily, which have sown terror among Ecuadorians.
Ecuador closed 2022 with the highest rate of violent deaths in its history, registering 25.32 per 100,000 inhabitants, the vast majority associated, according to the Government, to organized crime and drug trafficking, which has gained strength on the coast and has turned to ports into large springboards for cocaine reaching Europe and North America.
Verónica Sarauz, widow of former Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio ( REUTERS / Henry Romero)
Verónica Sarauz, Villavicencio’s wife, blamed the state for her husband’s death due to lack of protection and correísmo.
“The State is directly responsible for the murder of my husband, Fernando Villavicencio,” said Sarauz at a press conference in Quito, who according to the candidate’s close family had been separated from him for six years.
Sarauz assured that the “State has to give many answers about what happened” and denounced a lack of protection measures against the one who was still her husband, who was shot several times as he left a rally at a Quito school on Wednesday in the late.
“I don’t want to think that they sold my husband to be murdered in an infamous way,” the Ecuadorian conjectured, who did not provide evidence about the complaints made against the State and against correísmo, of which Villavicencio had become his staunch enemy as a result of the complaints he filed against them.
“I want to tell correísmo (…) that all of them are responsible, if not directly or indirectly, for the death of my husband, but it was in this government that my husband died and it is the one that has to give explanations,” argued Sarauz, who arrived to the press conference wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet and flanked by a member of security who carried a rifle.
Former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) has emphatically denied on several occasions having anything to do with the murder, for which six Colombians have been arrested for the moment, accused of being the alleged hitmen who carried out the crime.
A seventh man, also a Colombian national, died the same day of the attack as a result, according to the Ecuadorian authorities, of the injuries suffered from the exchange of shots between the attackers and the security personnel who were protecting Villavicencio.
Nine other people were also injured in the attack, of which five are in stable condition at the Women’s Clinic, where Villavicencio also arrived in a “fulminant” condition, which prevented health personnel from saving his life, according to a report. statement from that health center.
With information from EFE
Keep reading:
Crisis in Ecuador: the former mayor of Quito denounced that his daughter was the victim of an express kidnappingHow Ecuador became one of the most violent countries in Latin AmericaThe heartbreaking farewell to Fernando Villavicencio’s mother: “He left behind a legacy of struggle and transparency”
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