Prosecutor Leading TV Station Hijacking Probe in Ecuador Shot 20 Times in Presumed Gang Murder

Prosecutor César Suárez was assassinated on Wednesday evening, reportedly shot over 20 times while leaving his office in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Suárez was in charge of the investigation into the hijacking of the state-owned broadcaster TC Television on January 9, in which masked gunmen stormed a live news broadcast and took the anchors and all staff inside the studio building hostage.

Footage from the network showed what appeared to be a group of armed terrorists threatening to shoot network staffers and stuffing what appeared to be grenades and other makeshift explosives into the clothing of their hostages, including the network anchor.

Ecuador’s law enforcement authorities successfully liberated the studio, storming the premises and detaining some of the authors of the crime.

Those responsible are believed to be members of the Tiguerones, an organized criminal syndicate believed to be made up of between 4,000 and 5,000 members and maintain ties to Mexican drug cartels. Ecuadorian police have warned that Tiguerón members have infiltrated multiple state institutions, in addition to posing a threat of violence and instability to the country with their main criminal activities.

The seizure of the television studio occurred in the context of a larger gang war against the Ecuadorian government. Ecuador has experienced a dramatic surge in gang violence in the past five years, particularly targeting politicians and government officials. It took the ignominious title of most violent country in Latin America in 2023 as a result of the outbreak of gang violence and political assassinations.

The gang violence was a major factor in the 2023 presidential election as the frontrunner, journalist and lawmaker Fernando Villavicencio, was assassinated in front of a crowd of supporters and police officers following a campaign rally in August. The winner of that election, President Daniel Noboa, also claimed to be a target of a thwarted assault and had begun implementing a national plan to subdue organized criminal violence when the current hostilities broke out.

Following the escape from prison of Ecuador’s most notorious gang leader, José Adolfo “Fito” Macías, the head of the Choneros gang, Noboa implemented a “state of exception,” akin to martial law, that greatly expands police power against presumed gang members and limits the rights of association and movement of the general populace.

Noboa escalated that declaration to one of “internal armed conflict,” essentially a civil war, following the TC Television incident. The “internal armed conflict” status allows Noboa to use the nation’s military, in addition to domestic police resources, to fight the gangs. It also resulted in the designation of upwards of 20 collectives as “terrorist” organizations, rather than merely racketeering groups.

Relatives of slain Prosecutor Cesar Suarez remain outisde the morgue in Guayaquil, Ecuador on January 17, 2024.( MARCOS PIN/AFP via Getty Images)

The assassination of Suárez, who had engaged in multiple investigations into organized crime in the past, appeared to be an attempt to dissuade the government from its operations against the gangs. According to the Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo, Suárez had completed his work and exited his office in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, when he was approached by unknown shooters.

The incident reportedly occurred in his car. Another car drove up to Suárez and opened fire. Suárez died as a result of sustaining over 20 gunshot wounds.

Suárez had reportedly told El Universo on Tuesday that he did not have any police protections despite his direct contact with 13 suspects believed to have participated in the TC Television takeover, interrogating them on how they planned and executed the siege.

The prosecutor was in charge of finding the “mastermind” of the TV studio attack, according to the Argentine newspaper Clarín.

Reports following the attack indicated that the individuals in the car used to attack Suárez then abandoned the vehicle and set it on fire.

On Thursday, the head of Ecuador’s national police, César Zapata, announced the arrests of two men implicated in the assassination, though authorities did not offer details on their findings. They published photos of the arrest and the evidence seized on their official social media accounts.

Minutes after the announcement of the arrests, over 1,000 police officers and soldiers raided a nearby regional prison “with the purpose of registering prohibited objects and maintaining control within the interior of the penal center.”

Ecuador’s prisons are some of the world’s most violent and erupted in riots in the aftermath of the armed conflict declaration. Gang members took dozens of prison guards and criminal authorities hostage, forcing Ecuadorian security forces to focus on liberating the prisons rather than focusing all their efforts on criminals on the loose. The gang members filmed and published propaganda videos of their hostages on social media.

Ecuadorian authorities have detained over 1,500 people since January 9, the day the “state of exception” began, since Wednesday. Presumably including the late Suárez, 14 prosecutors have been tasked with processing the hundreds of cases.

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