Retired police colonel Santiago Loza was riddled with gunshots as he drove his vehicle in Quito by a group of unknown people traveling on a motorcycle
The director of an Ecuador prison, which was the scene of a massacre two weeks ago between inmates fighting for control of the drug trade, was killed in an attack in Quito on Thursday, the state prisons agency (SNAI) reported. Retired police colonel Santiago Loza “has been the victim of a deadly attack,” the entity said in a statement.
Loza, who was killed on a peripheral road in Quito, took over on November 9 as warden of the capital’s Pichincha 1 prison, which houses some 1,300 inmates. Ten inmates died on the 18th of the same month in that same prison, in the middle of a confrontation that erupted after the transfer of prison leaders to a maximum security prison in Guayaquil (southwest).
“We reject this cowardly act committed during the transformation process we have undertaken as an institution for the security and control of prisons,” the SNAI added. Police reported that, according to witnesses to the crime, Loza was riddled with bullets by people on a motorcycle while driving.
The vehicle “was approached by other test subjects, the same ones who allegedly fired firearms,” Freddy Sarzosa, national head of the Crimes Against Life directorate, told the press at large. Gangs linked to drug trafficking wage a war for power inside and outside prisons. More than a dozen massacres, the latest in Pichincha 1, have taken place since February last year in various correctional facilities in Ecuador, killing about 400 inmates. Some are among the worst in Latin America.
After Loza’s murder, SNAI director Guillermo Rodríguez called for the unity of all state institutions against crime. “Today is the time for the whole world to join in,” the official said in a statement from the organization. “Do we want a country to bow to crime, drug trafficking, violence or do we want a country that can have a good future?” he added.
Located between Colombia and Peru, the largest cocaine producers, Ecuador is facing an increase in violence due to drug trafficking, including the deaths of prosecutors and police officers. In 2021, the country seized the annual record of 210 tons and so far this year catches have reached around 170 tons.
The SNAI recruited about 1,500 new prison guards on Monday to bolster surveillance in overcrowded Ecuadorian prisons. “We are almost doubling the human resources required for professional, serious and technical management of all detention centers in Ecuador,” President Guillermo Lasso said at the time. Now “we have 6% overpopulation compared to 26% at the start of my administration,” in May 2021, the conservative president added. The country’s prisons have a capacity of about 30,200 inmates.
Faced with an offensive by criminal organizations, including car bombs detonated in early November, Lasso declared a state of emergency in three of the 24 Ecuadorian provinces most affected by violence. This measure, which will last until mid-December, enabled the government to mobilize the army in the streets of the provinces of Guayas, Esmeraldas and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas (home to six of the country’s 18 million inhabitants) and spend a night recommend curfew.
Source: La Verdad
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