He was one of Ecuador’s most wanted criminals since he escaped from prison earlier this year, while the country was engulfed in a brutal wave of armed violence in prisons and on the streets, instigated by organized crime gangs.
Now, Fabricio Colón Pico, leader of the drug trafficking gang “Los Lobos”, was captured, according to the Ecuadorian police.
The 44-year-old man, who had dyed his hair blonde in an effort to change his appearance, was arrested in the city of Puerto Quito, Pichincha province, in the north of the country.
Accused of organizing a plot to assassinate Ecuador’s attorney general, Diana Salazar, Colón Pico was Ecuador’s second most wanted man after Adolfo Macías, alias “Fito”who remains a fugitive from justice and whose flight led President Daniel Noboa to decree a state of emergency in the country.
In an interview with the BBC, President Noboa said in January that he would go “to the end” in the search for Macías and Colón Pico, two of the most prominent leaders of twenty criminal organizations – most with international ties – that have expanded its operations in the country.
Colón Pico escaped in the midst of the tension that Ecuador was experiencing after a series of prison riots, the explosion of several car bombs and the raid by hooded armed men on a television channel.
At that time, Noboa declared a state of emergency and the existence of a “internal armed conflict” in the country, ordering the Army to restore order in prisons and the streets, and classifying criminal groups as “terrorists.”
Leader of “The Wolves”
The authorities suspect that “Los Lobos”, a group that has about 8,000 members and has links to the Mexican cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, participated in the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, shot in August of last year by Colombian hitmen as he left a campaign rally in Quito.
Its members are mainly dedicated to drug trafficking and are accused of working as hitmen.
A few days after his escape, Colón Pico appeared in a video that circulated on social networks assuring that he had “nothing to do” with the crimes of which he is accused and asking Noboa for guarantees to surrender.
“I want to surrender, Mr. President, I fled because they told me they were going to kill me, my life is in danger, not for any other reason.””, he pointed.
Noboa responded by saying in an interview that “terrorists must be treated as terrorists and we will act firmly. “If you want to turn yourself in, no one is stopping you.”
The recapture of Colón Pico occurred a day after the government of Ecuador won popular support in a referendum held on Sunday to be able to apply new measures to confront the violence that the country is experiencing, such as the intervention of the Armed Forces in security operations, the increase in penalties for serious crimes or the extradition of Ecuadorian citizens required by the justice system of other countries.
In recent years, Ecuador has become a strategic point for the operations of gangs linked to the Colombian and Mexican cartels, and the Albanian mafia, among other transnational organizations.
The homicide rate in the country is one of the highest in Latin America and the prisons have been the scene of bloody confrontations.
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