Ecuador police say they have re-arrested a notorious gang leader nicknamed ‘The Savage’ just a day after the country voted for an unprecedented crackdown on criminal gangs in the country.
Fabricio Colón Pico, the head of the deadly Los Lobos gang, has been on the run since escaping from prison in early January.
But police arrested the 44-year-old this morning in the small town of Puerto Quito in the northern Pichincha region.
They shared a mug shot, which showed him wearing a dirty gray top and having dyed blonde hair.
He was one of 30 people who escaped from Riobamba prison in January during a wave of riots and violent attacks by gangs across the country, taking advantage of the nationwide chaos to leave the prison.
Fabricio Colón Pico (pictured), the head of the deadly Los Lobos gang, has been on the run since escaping from prison in early January
Pico leads the deadly gang from Los Lobos
Gangs have wreaked havoc on the country, once considered one of the safest in South America
Ecuador has seen a dramatic increase in gang violence
While twenty fugitives were quickly rearrested after their escape, Pico managed to evade capture for months.
The sudden wave of violence inflicted on the country by gangs in Ecuador, once considered one of the safest countries in South America, has led to citizens voting for a raft of unprecedented crackdowns targeting the country’s military and police. give the country more powers to fight organized crime.
The measures, proposed by 36-year-old President Daniel Noboa, will allow the military to patrol the country with police. In addition, prosecutors will have more power to extradite convicted drug lords and increase penalties for crimes including terrorism and murder.
Noboa said the government would now have “more tools to fight crime and restore peace to Ecuadorian families.”
Gangs like Los Lobos were labeled terrorist groups, and Noboa authorized Ecuador’s military to “neutralize” them in the days following the “internal armed conflict.”
Pico’s gang is affiliated with Albanian gangsters who help their South American colleagues export drugs to West and North Africa and then to Europe.
Soldiers supporting police stand guard outside El Inca prison in Quito on January 8, 2024
Prisoners remain on the roof of Turi Prison, where prison guards are held hostage, in Cuenca, Ecuador
A photo distributed by the Ecuadorian Armed Forces of an intervention by the Litoral prison after a riot broke out in the prison center in Guayaquil, Ecuador
Children stand with a voter and ask questions on the ballot of a referendum proposed by President Daniel Noboa to approve new security measures aimed at cracking down on criminal gangs fueling escalating violence
Similar to the other cartels, Los Lobos conducts drug trafficking operations, making much of their income by moving drugs purchased by Mexican cartels from groups in Colombia, and then exporting the product from various ports on the coastline of Ecuador.
But the group also controls much of Ecuador’s illegal mining sector, adding to their already enormous wealth.
The gang is also accused of plotting political assassinations, with Ecuador’s attorney general Diana Salazar claiming Pico plotted to kill her.
Los Lobos is also accused of planning and carrying out the killing of anti-gang presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who was shot dead as he left a campaign rally in Quito, the country’s capital, in August 2023, days before the presidential election.
Located between world-leading cocaine producers Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has become a hub for foreign and domestic drug cartels blamed for a series of gruesome massacres, kidnappings and extortions.
Fishermen have been slaughtered at ports, mutilated bodies have been hung from bridges and hundreds have been killed in riots in prisons.
Prisons in particular have become a hotbed of violence, with the cartels vying for power in the country’s prisons, from where they then exert enormous influence.
Since 2018, the national murder rate has more than quadrupled, from six to 26 per 100,000 inhabitants – a figure that puts the country among the bottom 15 countries.
Prisons in particular have become a hotbed of violence, with the cartels vying for power in the country’s prisons, from where they then exert enormous influence
Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa takes part in a referendum on security measures to combat violence
Behind the violence lies what the UN Office on Drugs and Crime describes as a global “long-term increase in both the supply and demand for cocaine”
The country’s National Police counted 3,568 violent deaths in the first six months of this year, far more than the 2,042 reported in the same period in 2022.
That year ended with 4,600 violent deaths, the country’s highest in history and double 2021’s total, with 2023 on track for even more.
Behind the violence lies what the UN Office on Drugs and Crime describes as a global “prolonged increase in both the supply and demand for cocaine.”
While the US market has turned to other drugs such as fentanyl, the European market has driven demand for the powder, with Balkan gangs and Italy’s feared ‘Ndrangheta mafia expanding into Ecuador.
According to The Guardian, this has given impetus to local criminal groups accused of using extreme violence, similar to what cartels have seen in Mexico and other Latin American countries in recent decades.