Gunmen in Ecuador kill 9 people; 10 hurt
QUITO, Ecuador, April 1, (AP): Gunmen attacked a group of people in Ecuador ’s coastal city of Guayaquil killing nine and injuring 10 others, police said Sunday, the latest in a string of violent incidents in the South American country.
The attack took place around 7 pm local time Saturday in the southern neighborhood of Guasmo. According to police, the armed group entered a pedestrian street in a grey Chevrolet Spark, where a group of people were practicing sports. The gunmen got out of the vehicle and proceeded to shoot people.
“So far, the result is nine people dead and 10 injured,” police Col. Ramiro Arequipa told journalists around midday on Sunday.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
It was the second mass killing in as many days. On Friday, five people who had been kidnapped were killed execution style in the coastal province of Manabi by an armed gang. Police said there were signs the victims were tourists mistakenly caught up in a local drug-trafficking dispute. They didn’t elaborate.
In that incident, an armed group had kidnapped a total of 11 people. Police said the other six, including five minors, were rescued and handed over to their families. Two suspects were arrested on Saturday morning, according to police.
Remind
The killings in Manabi “remind us that the battle continues,” said Ecuador’s President on the social media network X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday.
“Narcoterrorism and its allies are looking for spaces to scare us, but they will not succeed,” Noboa said. His post contained a video of a man handcuffed and bent over, being led away forcefully by an armed police officer.
Ecuador was once considered a bastion of peace in Latin America, but in recent years has seen a surge in violent attacks.
Noboa declared a state of emergency in January, which provides for permanent operations by a security force made up of police and military. In addition, a five-hour curfew is in force in high-incidence areas such as Guayaquil.
On March 24, the 27-year-old mayor of a small town - also in the province of Manabi - was killed along with her collaborator. Brigitte Garcia and Jairo Loor were found inside a vehicle with gunshot wounds.
On Thursday, a riot in a Guayaquil prison under military and police control left three inmates dead and four injured. Ecuador surpassed a rate of 40 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants at the end of 2023, one of the highest in the region, according to police.
Also: Daniel Noboa
RIO DE JANEIRO: Two days after Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman 2018 assassination, her widow sat down with the chief of the state’s civil police, who pledged to do everything in his power to hold the guilty parties to account.
In fact, the man Veja magazine once exalted as “Rio’s Sherlock” had the exact opposite intent, according to newly revealed allegations. Federal Police arrested Barbosa on March 24 - over six years later - for allegedly helping orchestrate Franco’s killing and taking money to obstruct the very investigation he would oversee.
“Hours after the murder, I was in front of a man who knew exactly what had happened and, more than that, who was part of ordering it,” said through tears in an interview with TV Brasil after his arrest.
The explosive revelations in the nearly 500-page Federal Police report offer an unprecedented glimpse into how organized crime has undermined Rio’s institutions and reveal the extent of corruption in a city where militias allegedly pay police to look away. The death of Franco, a rising political star who resisted militias’ expansion and fought ardently for the poor, has driven home the consequences of allowing organized crime to run roughshod over Rio’s sprawling landscape.
“The Marielle case is quite emblematic,” said
a professor of public security at the Federal Fluminense University and ex-director of Rio’s public security secretariat that oversees police. “In Rio, we govern with crime - not against it.”
Barbosa’s arrest came only after federal authorities started investigating once leftist President
took office in 2023. Federal Police made a plea deal with former police officer Ronnie Lessa, who told them that two politician brothers hired him to kill Franco and informed him Barbosa had signed off beforehand. Police say they ordered her dead because she was an obstacle to militias’ interests.
Barbosa’s attorneys told The Associated Press that he categorically denies any wrongdoing or having ever met the accused politicians, and said the allegations are conjecture based on a criminal’s words.
Upon his promotion to police chief, Barbosa delivered a defiant speech to a packed auditorium, demanding the “fight against one of the greatest evils that destroy the state: corruption!”
Marielle Franco’s Rivaldo Barbosa, Muniz, Lula da Silva ❑ ❑ ❑ Mônica Benício Jacqueline Luiz Inácio
MEXICO CITY: The US-based missionary group Mountain Gateway said Friday it will file appeals against the convictions of 11 members of the group who were jailed by Nicaragua in December on money laundering charges.
The 11 are Nicaraguans who worked with the Texas-based group.
The government of President has often used charges of money laundering to expel or outlaw hundreds of faith groups and non-governmental organizations in Nicaragua.
The group’s leader, said the 11 faced between 12 and 15 years in prison. Hancock and two other Americans also faced charges, but were not in Nicaragua at the time the others were arrested. The group said it complied with all government rules to operate in Nicaragua.
In December, Mountain Gateway said it was “saddened to hear that our registration as a ministry in Nicaragua has been canceled. In response to the allegations of money laundering, Mountain Gateway possesses documentation demonstrating that all funding has been managed appropriately.”
In 2023, Nicaragua’s government declared the Jesuit religious order illegal and ordered the confiscation of all its property. It confiscated the Jesuit-run University of Central America in Nicaragua, arguing it was a “center of terrorism.”
Daniel Ortega Jon Britton Hancock,
Prigozhin