[ad_1]
Adolfo Macias, who was recaptured in June after escaping from a jail final yr, will seem in a New York state courtroom on Monday.
Ecuadorean gang chief Adolfo Macias Villamar, often known as “Fito”, is ready to look in a federal courtroom in the USA, the place he’ll plead not responsible to worldwide costs of drug and weapons trafficking, his lawyer says.
The Ecuadorean authorities on Sunday extradited the infamous drug trafficker, a month after he was recaptured following a 2024 escape from a maximum-security penitentiary, the nation’s jail authority mentioned.
Macias, the chief of the Los Choneros gang, was serving a 34-year sentence at a jail in Guayaquil for a slew of crimes, together with drug trafficking, organised crime, and homicide.
The flight transporting Macias landed in New York state on Sunday night time, the report mentioned. His lawyer informed the Reuters information company that Macias “will plead not responsible” earlier than the Brooklyn federal courtroom on Monday.
Particulars of the handover to the US authorities and the extradition weren’t specified. The US authorities has but to challenge an official assertion following the extradition.
The US Lawyer’s Workplace had filed costs in April towards Macias on suspicion of cocaine distribution, conspiracy and firearms violations, together with weapons smuggling.
The previous taxi driver turned crime boss agreed in a Quito court final week to be extradited to the US to face the costs.
He’s the primary Ecuadorean extradited by his nation since a brand new measure was written into regulation final yr, after a referendum by which President Daniel Noboa sought the approval of strikes to spice up his struggle on legal gangs.
Ecuador, as soon as a peaceable haven between the world’s two high cocaine exporters, Colombia and Peru, has seen violence erupt lately as rival gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for management.
Cult following
Quickly after Macias escaped from prison in January 2024, Noboa declared Ecuador to be in a state of “inner armed battle” and ordered the army and tanks into the streets to “neutralise” the gangs. The transfer has been criticised by human rights organisations.
As a drug lord, Macias cultivated a cult standing amongst fellow gang members and the general public.
Whereas behind bars in 2023, he launched a video addressed to “the Ecuadorian individuals” whereas flanked by armed males. He additionally threw events in jail, the place he had entry to all the things from liquor to roosters for cockfighting matches.
Macias’s Los Choneros has ties to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Colombia’s Gulf Clan, which is taken into account the world’s largest cocaine exporter, in addition to Balkan mafias, in response to the Ecuadorian Organised Crime Observatory.
His escape from jail prompted widespread violence and a large army and police recapture operation, together with authorities “wished” posters providing $1m for info resulting in his arrest.
On June 25, Macias was discovered hiding in a bunker hid underneath flooring tiles in a luxurious house within the fishing port of Manta, the centre of operations for Los Choneros. Noboa declared he can be extradited, “the earlier the higher”.
“We’ll gladly ship him and let him reply to the North American regulation,” Noboa informed CNN on the time.
Greater than 70 p.c of all cocaine produced on the earth now passes via Ecuador’s ports, in response to authorities knowledge. In 2024, the nation seized a document 294 tonnes of medicine, primarily cocaine.
[ad_2]
Source link