A judge of Ecuador sent to preventive detention 77 citizens detained last Sunday in a police and military operation, when there was an attempt to forcibly occupy a hospital in the city of Yaguachiin the coastal province of Guayas.
Several detainees were captured in a “clandestine rehabilitation center” located a few meters from the hospital “where – apparently – they took refuge when the uniformed men arrived,” the Prosecutor’s Office clarified in a statement that will prosecute the 77 imprisoned for the alleged crime of terrorism.
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The Prosecutor’s Office, in a hearing by videoconference at the Judicial Unit for the Judgment of Crimes Against Corruption and Organized Crime of Quito, presented as evidence the versions of the agents who participated in the raids and other evidence that was obtained during the operation.
The judge in the case accepted a request from the Prosecutor’s Office and issued preventive detention orders against the 77 defendants, who have been transferred to the Penitentiary of the Coastthe largest and most populated prison in Ecuadorlocated in the city of Guayaquilcapital of the province of Guayas.
The Public Ministry explained that the tax investigation will last thirty days.
Early last Sunday, according to police reports, several citizens occupied the facilities of the Yaguachi hospital, where an injured individual who was believed to be part of a gang of organized crime and who later died.
According to the first investigations, the detainees had apparently been admitted to the hospital in Yaguachi to provide “guard” to the wounded man.
Police personnel who went to the scene to respond to the alarm generated in the hospital were greeted with gunshots, so military assistance was requested, the police said. Prosecutor’s Office.
He added that several people involved in the attempted occupation of the health home had taken refuge in a nearby building, where a clandestine care center for people with addictions operated.
According to the Public Ministry, a “command center of a criminal group, which managed six video surveillance cameras, located in streets, for their security surrounding”.
Furthermore, in that property, according to the Police, there were “a brothel where minors worked.”
During the raids, they were found “two homemade firearms, five unexpired bullets, four knives, drugs, a bulletproof vest, two communications radios, five cell phones, six video surveillance cameras and forty pamphlets with messages from the organized crime group (GDO) ‘Los Águilas’. ‘”, as detailed by the Police in their informative part.
The crime of terrorism is punishable in the Ecuadorian penal code with between ten and thirteen years in prison.
In Ecuador, a state of exception is in force, with a night curfew, due to the spiral of violence that organized crime groups have generated on a national scale that included kidnappingos, murders, explosive devices, burned vehicles, prison riots and the raid on a television channel by thirteen armed men, arrested shortly after the assault.
President Daniel Noboa also declared the “internal armed conflict” against organized crime gangs, which he designated as terrorist groups and non-state belligerent actors to be neutralized by State security forces.
