Ecuadorean security officials on Wednesday captured the gang leader known as “Fito” whose escape in 2024 set off violence across the country.
President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador announced the capture of the gang leader, José Adolfo Macías, on social media. “We have done our part to proceed with Fito’s extradition to the United States. We are awaiting their response,” Mr. Noboa wrote in Spanish.
Mr. Macías is wanted by the United States on accusations of trafficking drugs and smuggling weapons.
Mr. Macías, 45, leads the powerful Los Choneros gang, one of Ecuador’s most violent criminal organizations. The U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York indicted him earlier this year on seven counts, including cocaine distribution.
He escaped prison in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, in January 2024, when officers who had arrived to transfer Mr. Macías to a maximum-security prison discovered he was missing from his cell. The government declared a 60-day state of emergency while they searched for him, triggering riots in several prisons, gang attacks, kidnappings and bombings across the country.
The U.S. Treasury Department placed sanctions on Mr. Macías and on Los Choneros in February of that year.
On Wednesday, authorities found him hiding in an underground bunker in Manta, a city about 120 miles from Guayaquil, Interior Minister John Reimberg told reporters. The military released video footage of the operation, which involved the Ecuadorean police and armed forces, showing Mr. Macías shirtless and handcuffed as officers push him down to a tile floor.
In the video, officers loaded Mr. Macías into an armored vehicle and put him on an Air Force plane to Guayaquil. In another video, taken by The Associated Press, he is being led off the plane wearing a dark blue shirt, gray shorts and flip-flops. He was being taken to prison, Mr. Reimberg said.
Mr. Macías’s escape came two months after Mr. Noboa’s election. During his campaign for president, Mr. Noboa vowed to crack down on the gangs that had disrupted Ecuador’s security.
“More will fall, we will reclaim the country. No truce,” Mr. Noboa wrote on social media on Wednesday.
The U.S. Embassy in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, congratulated officials for capturing Mr. Macías in a social media post.
Mark A. Walsh contributed translation.
Francesca Regalado is a Times reporter covering breaking news.
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