Quito [Ecuador], October 8: Six men suspected of involvement in the August murder of Ecuador's anti-corruption presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio have been killed in prison, the prisons agency has said, barely a week before a crucial run-off election.
The killings took place on Friday in a penitentiary in Guayaquil, the South American country's largest city, the attorney general's office announced earlier. Ecuador's government swiftly condemned the killings.
Outgoing president Guillermo Lasso pledged "neither complicity nor cover-up" in getting to the bottom of the killings, in a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
"Here the truth will be known," he said. The SNAI prisons agency said in a statement the six men were all Colombian nationals. It gave no more details of the killings.
The government has said authorities are determined to identify those behind Villavicencio's murder. Villavicencio, a prominent journalist, was gunned down less than two weeks before a first round general election as he left a campaign event in the capital, Quito.
Police arrested the six Colombians on the day of Villavicencio's assassination. A seventh suspect, also Colombian, was shot and killed by police, while other suspects were later arrested.
Business heir Daniel Noboa, who holds a narrow lead in some polls ahead of the run-off, said in a social media post that the government must provide details of what occurred at the prison and that peace must be restored in the country.
Source: Qatar Tribune