Noboa, a 36-year-old businessman and son of the country’s richest man, surprisingly won Ecuador’s presidential election in October last year. After taking office in November, he welcomed a country mired in violence and controlled by gangs. Paradoxically, the gangs exercised their power from the prisons, whose cell blocks the authorities did not dare to enter. In January, gang members challenged the State by attacking the set of a television station while it was broadcasting live and sowing panic in the streets of Guayaquil with shootings and kidnappings. Noboa decreed a state of emergency due to “internal commotion,” which empowered him to take the Army to the streets and turn the gangs into military objectives under the label of terrorism. In just two months, homicides have been reduced by half and the president has announced the creation of two prisons similar to those of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.
DNA, indeed, can help identify prisoners in the event that they are murdered in riots, which in Ecuador are of unusual violence: beheadings with knives, dismemberments, burning of corpses. The information that is stolen from inmates is that these records can be used to involve them in crimes that they are going to commit in the future or that they have already committed in the past. For example, an inmate convicted of murder who borrows his genetic material might find that those samples match those collected in a rape case. A sample of the genetic profile can only be requested by a judge or prosecutor. The percentage of people who agree to provide this information is very low in cases that are settled in court, according to one expert, which is why it is more than suspicious that the Government has convinced practically the entire prison population.
According to a source who witnessed the taking of samples this Friday at the Guayaquil regional prison, a police officer received the prisoners and informed them that they had to fill out a form, without explaining anything else. They then went to a table where they were assigned a code and their photograph was taken. They were then taken to another place where police officers entered their data into a computer, followed by a swab that an expert was in charge of storing to respect the chain of custody. None of them raised any objection and anyone who asked was told that they were fingerprints necessary to identify them at some point. “I mean, just in case they dismember us?” said more than one. They answered yes and the procedure continued.
The Permanent Committee on Human Rights, CDH, which monitors the situation in prisons, was not aware of this information. “The right to health would be violated, these sensitive data must be kept under absolute confidentiality and be consented to, and provided voluntarily,” says Billy Navarrete, its director. “The person should be accompanied or at least advised by his legal representative,” he adds. “The Ministry of Public Health is the only entity that should ethically guarantee access to this highly sensitive information, there is no other delegation here,” he insists.
The Government also wants to avoid cases such as that of the criminal Leandro Norero, alias The boss, which revealed the incompetence of the authorities. In 2020, Norero, one of the most important drug trafficking bosses, took advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to declare his death due to the virus and evade the authorities of Peru, where he had an open case. The next time he was located, alive, he was in a mansion in Samborondón, a wealthy city attached to Guayaquil. He was imprisoned again and on October 2022, in the medium-security ward of Cotopaxi, he died for the second time. El Patrón fell into an ambush organized by the criminal gang Los Lobos, who were his allies and business partners, and who maintain control of the prison. In theory, he was dismembered and then part of his body was cremated. However, police suspect it was another ruse. The identification was made with a forensic anthropological study – descriptions of family members, tattoos, scars – and not a genetic profile, because it was not available. Without this biological profile it cannot be one hundred percent certain that the criminal has died. Identity changes with plastic surgery and faking burials are common tricks of drug lords.
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