QUITO, Aug 10 (Reuters) – One dead suspect and six others arrested in the assassination of Ecuadorean presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio are Colombians, Ecuadorean police said on Thursday, and the government said it was pursuing the “intellectual authors” of the murder.
The fatal shooting on Wednesday night, less than two weeks before the election, has sent shockwaves through the South American country, leading some rivals to suspend campaigning and bringing the issue of rising violence to the foreground.
Villavicencio, a vocal critic of corruption and organized crime, was killed leaving an evening campaign event at an education facility in northern Quito.
The deceased suspect died of injuries sustained in a shoot-out, the attorney general’s office said on Wednesday. Nine people, including a candidate for the legislature and two police officers, were injured, it added.
The dead suspect had been arrested on weapons charges in July, the government said on Thursday, adding that the six detained men belong to organized crime groups. The police press office confirmed their nationalities later on Thursday afternoon.
“The national police now have the first arrests of the alleged material authors of this abominable event and will employ all of their operative and investigative capacity to discover the motive of this crime and its intellectual authors,” Interior Minister Juan Zapata told journalists.
The involvement of Colombian nationals in the murder is reminiscent of the 2021 killing of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise, who was assassinated in his home by a group which included 26 Colombians and two Haitian-Americans.
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