QUITO, Ecuador\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Ecuador on Sunday extradited to the United States the leader of a violent gang who relied on hit men, bribes and military weapons to do business.<\/p>\n
Jos\u00e9 Adolfo Mac\u00edas Villamar, whose nickname is \u201cFito,\u201d escaped from an Ecuadoran prison in January 2024 and was recaptured late last month. In April, a U.S. attorney indicted him in New York City on charges he imported thousands of pounds of cocaine into the United States.<\/p>\n
Mac\u00edas \u201cwas removed from the La Roca Detention Center under the custody of the National Police and Armed Forces for the appropriate proceedings in the context of an extradition process,\u201d Ecuador\u2019s government agency responsible for overseeing prisons, SNAI, said in a message sent to journalists.<\/p>\n
Details of the handover were not specified.<\/p>\n
A photograph released by SNAI showed Mac\u00edas wearing a T-shirt, shorts, a bulletproof vest and helmet. Several police officers were guarding him at an undisclosed location.<\/p>\n
The Ecuadoran will appear Monday in federal court in Brooklyn, \u201cwhere he will plead not guilty,\u201d Mac\u00edas\u2019 lawyer Alexei Schacht told the Associated Press via email. After that, he will be detained in a prison to be determined, Schacht added. <\/p>\n
The extradition decision came after the United States sent a document to Ecuador offering guarantees for the respect of the rights of the 45-year-old criminal leader.<\/p>\n
Since 2020, Mac\u00edas has led Los Choneros, a criminal organization that emerged in the 1990s. The gang employed people to buy firearms and ammunition in the United States and smuggle them into Ecuador, according to April\u2019s indictment. Cocaine would flow into the U.S. with the help of Mexican cartels. Together, the groups controlled key cocaine trafficking routes through Ecuador, violently targeting law enforcement, politicians, lawyers and civilians who stood in the way.<\/p>\n
Mac\u00edas escaped from a Guayaquil prison where he was serving a 34-year sentence for drug trafficking, organized crime and murder. He was recaptured a year and a half later on the country\u2019s central coast. <\/p>\n
Mac\u00edas has cultivated a cult status among fellow gang members and the public in his home country. While behind bars in 2023, he released a video addressed to \u201cthe Ecuadorian people\u201d while flanked by armed men. He also threw parties in prison, where he had access to luxuries including liquor and roosters for cockfighting matches.<\/p>\n
Mac\u00edas is the first Ecuadoran to be extradited to the U.S. from Ecuador, prison authorities said. Two other Ecuadoran drug traffickers have previously been handed over to the United States from Colombia, where they were arrested.<\/p>\n
Molina writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"QUITO, Ecuador\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Ecuador on Sunday extradited to the United States the leader of a violent gang who relied on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,6484,2724,22051,16470,22055,4122,22053,22050,3,3590,22056,3076,22052,2830,21,19,22,20,25,24,22054],"class_list":["post-25100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-april","tag-associated-press","tag-cocaine","tag-country","tag-drug-gang-leader","tag-ecuador","tag-ecuadoran-prison","tag-macias","tag-news","tag-people","tag-politician","tag-prison","tag-snai","tag-u-s","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-violent-gang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}