“Fito”, the largest drug trafficker, will be extradited to the United States

Ecuador’s biggest drug trafficker, Adolfo Macias, nicknamed “Fito”, agreed on Friday to be extradited to the United States, where the prosecution accuses him of cocaine and weapons traffic, announced the national court of justice of the South American country.

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Considered one of the most dangerous criminals of Ecuador. Meanwhile, “Fito” had been arrested at the end of June in his hometown of Manta, 350 km southwest of Quito, after a year and a half of the run.

He had escaped in January 2024 from the Penitentiary Center of Guayaquil. Therefore, on which he had the grip and where he has been serving since 2011 a sentence of 34 years’ imprisonment for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.

Dressed in the orange “fito”, largest drug trafficker, will uniform of the prisoners. the cut beard, “Fito” attended the hearing on Friday from his cell, in videoconferencing, and replied to the judge: “Yes, I accept” [l’extradition]. This decision opens the way to its transfer.

“Once extradition is accepted … Accepted, the procedure for its transfer to the United States will take its course,” the Court said in a statement.

The Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa will have to order the delivery of “FITO” to American justice.

The latter will become the first Ecuadorian to be extradited since the reinstatement in equator of this procedure by referendum in 2024. a measure defended by Mr. Noboa in his fight against organized crime.

Head of one of the country’s main gangs. the Choneros, which reigns in particular over cocaine traffic, “Fito” was associated with the assassination in August 2023 of one of the main candidates for the Ecuadorian presidential election, Fernando Villavicencio.

His “fito”, largest drug trafficker, will escape in early 2024 had sparked an unprecedented wave of violence in the country. killing dozens of deaths and generating mutinies in several prisons as well as street fights triggered by gangs.

Daniel Noboa then declared the country in “internal armed conflict”. deployed the army to try to neutralize the twenty criminal groups involved.

Due to its situation between Colombia. Peru – the world’s largest producing countries of cocaine – and its strategic ports on the Pacific, the equator has become in recent years the theater of violent clashes for control of the territories intended for the delivery of cocaine, whose main destinations are the United States and Europe.