A prosecutor in Ecuador was killed by gunmen in one of the country's most violent cities on Thursday, on the same day the head of the State Attorney General's Office received death threats, authorities said.
The fiscal agent Leonardo Palacios died "after an attack perpetrated today (this Thursday) against him" in the town of Durán, near Guayaquil, the Prosecutor's Office said through Twitter.
He added that the official was attacked after attending "a trial hearing against two defendants for murder." While he was driving, some subjects intercepted him and opened fire. Authorities have gathered more than 40 ballistic evidence at the crime scene.
Prosecutor Diana Salazar, threatened. Photo: Rodrigo Buendía / AFP
According to local media, Palacios was returning home at night, when armed men on a motorcycle intercepted him and fired about thirty shots. The images of his car completely shot are chilling.
Jorge Hadathy, Duran's police chief, told reporters that a secretary from the prosecutor's office was also in the car, who was unharmed.
Death threats against Diana Salazar
The murder of Palacios occurred on the same day that the State Attorney General, Diana Salazar, received death threats through a video sent by Whatsapp and that was disseminated by local media.
It shows at least six people armed with rifles and dressed in black and with caps that prevent their faces from being seen.
"You're going to have a birthday, I don't want to ruin your party by killing your daughter," says the man's voice in the video received by the prosecutor, known for having prosecuted for corruption the former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
While the armed men point their rifles against the ground, one can also hear: "If you don't go for good, you go for bad and for bad I send you to celebrate hell."
Ecuador faces an increase in criminal violence and drug trafficking, with a homicide rate of 25 per 100,000 inhabitants.
The brutal threat to Ecuador's attorney general who called for the capture of Rafael Correa. Photo: Ecuadorian Prosecutor's Office
Last year, two prosecutors and a judge were shot dead in different parts of the country.
After the denunciation of the death threats against Salazar, the Ministry of the Interior ordered to reinforce the security of the official.
Salazar and Rafael Correa's vice president
On the same day that Salazar received the death threats, the prosecutor requested that a court set a date and time to charge Jorge Glas, former vice president of Rafael Correa (2007-2017), accused of corruption in a work executed in the coastal province of Manabí, the area of a powerful earthquake in April 2016.
In a video broadcast through social networks, Salazar indicated that he has asked the court that follows the case to attend his request against Glas, who already has two firm convictions for corruption, and two other people identified as Carlos B. and Pablo O., all of them accused of the crime of embezzlement (embezzlement).
The prosecutor recalled that on April 16, 2016, when Correa was still in office, an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 devastated the province of Manabí and the south of its neighbor Esmeraldas that left more than 670 dead, thousands affected and millionaire material losses.
In March 2017, the Government of that time signed a contract declared as a priority for the construction of the Manta-Colisa highway, under the umbrella of the Solidarity Law issued to serve the areas affected by the earthquake.
According to Salazar, in 2019 the Comptroller's Office (State Court of Accounts) announced that it had detected irregularities in that contract.
AFP and EFE
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