The director of the Litoral Penitentiary, the largest and most populated prison in Ecuador, was assassinated this Friday in an attack in which another prison official who was accompanying her at the time of the attack was injured, as reported by the National Service of Comprehensive Assistance to Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), the state prison agency.
The attack on Maria Daniela Icaza and his companion occurred around 6:00 p.m. local time (23:00 GMT) on the highway between the town of Daule and the city of Guayaquil, where the Litoral penitentiary is located. Icaza went to the Hospital del Guasmo Sur, located south of Guayaquil, while, according to local media Armed men stopped the vehicle and shot at it.which was found on the passenger seat.
Initially, SNAI reported that Icaza had managed to be transferred alive to hospital, but later confirmed her death.This is the second murder of a prison’s highest authority in nine days.after Álex Guevara, director of the Lago Agrio prison in the Amazonian province of Sucumbíos, was assassinated in similar circumstances on September 3.
Massacres in Ecuadorian prisons
The Litoral Penitentiary, officially called the Guayas Men’s Deprivation of Liberty Center No. 1, is the largest of the five prisons that make up the Guayaquil Penitentiary Complex, in which approximately 12,000 prisoners.
More than 6,000 people are in the Litoral penitentiary, which was the scene, between 2021 and 2023, of the worst massacres occurred due to clashes between criminal gangs that they contested internal control, at least until the militarization of these centers ordered at the beginning of the year by President Daniel Noboa.
The entry of the military into the penitentiary facilities occurred within the framework of the state of emergency and “internal armed conflict” declared by the leader against organized crime, attributed to an increase in criminal violence that has made Ecuador the Latin American country with the highest homicide rate, recording 47.2 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023.
The Murder WaveIt also claimed the lives of other prison directors, as well as municipal authorities, including several mayors, and at the national level, such as presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
