Photo by Kindel Media
Ecuadorian gang leader Adolfo Macías Villamar, widely known by his alias “Fito”, has been extradited to the United States to face charges related to drug and arms trafficking.Macías, who was the head of the infamous Los Choneros gang, will appear in a US federal court on Monday, where he plans to plead not guilty to international charges of narcotics and weapons smuggling, his lawyer Alexei Schacht told Reuters.
The extradition marks a significant development in Ecuador’s ongoing battle against organised crime. Fito was recaptured in June, more than a year after escaping from a high-security prison, where he had been serving a 34-year sentence for a range of serious crimes.
As leader of Los Choneros, Macías had built a vast criminal network with ties to powerful drug cartels from Mexico and the Balkans. Authorities also suspect him of orchestrating the 2023 assassination of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. The gang has been largely blamed for Ecuador’s drastic transformation from a popular tourist destination to a country with one of the highest murder rates in Latin America.
Ecuador’s location—sandwiched between the world’s two largest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru—has turned it into a major hub for the global drug trade. Today, more than 70% of all cocaine produced globally is believed to transit through Ecuador’s ports.
Macías’s dramatic recapture took place in June when Ecuadorian police discovered him hiding in an underground bunker beneath a luxury residence in the coastal city of Manta. Following his arrest, he was transferred to La Roca, a maximum-security prison. At the time, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa hailed the arrest as a major victory for national security and declared that Macías would be extradited to the United States.
On Sunday, Ecuador’s prison authority confirmed that Macías had been removed from his cell and handed over to US officials for extradition. His lawyer, Schacht, told Reuters that the two would appear together in a Brooklyn federal courtroom. “Mr. Macías and I will appear tomorrow before the Brooklyn federal court … where he will plead not guilty,” Schacht stated. “After, he will be held in a to-be-determined prison.”
President Noboa, who has taken an increasingly hardline stance on crime, previously held a referendum in which Ecuadorians voted to allow the extradition of their citizens. The move was part of his broader effort to combat spiralling violence and the influence of transnational criminal organisations.
In a March interview with the BBC, Noboa said he wanted military forces from the United States, Europe, and Brazil to join Ecuador’s intensified campaign against the criminal gangs destabilising the country.
