The Ecuadoran government on Sunday extradited notorious drug trafficker Adolfo Macias, alias “Fito,” to the US, a month after he was recaptured following an escape from a maximum security penitentiary last year, the nation’s prison authority said.
The flight transporting Macias landed in New York state on Sunday night, according to the Flightradar tracking site.
The US Attorney’s Office in April filed charges against Macias, the head of the Los Choneros gang, on suspicion of cocaine distribution, conspiracy and firearms breaches, including weapons smuggling.
Photo: AFP / Ecuadoran Prison Authority SNAI / Handout
A letter filed by the US Department of Justice on Sunday said that Macias was due to appear in a federal court yesterday “for an arraignment on the Superseding Indictment in this case.”
The drug lord on Sunday was removed from custody at a maximum security prison in Ecuador’s southwest “for the purposes that correspond to the extradition process,” Ecuador’s prison authority SNAI said in a statement.
Macias, a former taxi driver turned crime boss, agreed in a Quito court last week to be extradited to the US to face the charges.
He is the first Ecuadoran extradited by his nation since a new measure was written into law last year, after a referendum in which Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa sought the approval of moves to boost his war on criminal gangs.
Ecuador, once a peaceful haven between the world’s two top cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, has seen violence erupt as enemy gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.
Soon after Macias escaped from prison in January last year, Noboa declared Ecuador to be in a state of “internal armed conflict,” and ordered the military and tanks into the streets to “neutralize” the gangs. The move has been criticized by human rights organizations.
Macias’ Los Choneros has ties to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Colombia’s Gulf Clan — the world’s largest cocaine exporter — and Balkan mafias, according to the Ecuadoran Organized Crime Observatory.
The crime boss’ escape from prison prompted widespread violence, and a massive military and police recapture operation, including government “wanted” posters offering US$1 million for information leading to his arrest.
Macias on June 25 was found hiding in a bunker concealed under floor tiles in a luxury home in the fishing port of Manta, the center of operations for Los Choneros. Noboa declared he would be extradited, “the sooner the better.”
“We will gladly send him and let him answer to North American law,” Noboa told CNN at the time.
More than 70 percent of all cocaine produced in the world now passes through Ecuador’s ports, according to government data.
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