Feared Ecuadorian mob boss dubbed ‘The Savage’ who escaped prison amid ‘civil war’ chaos
Ecuador police say they have re-arrested a notorious gang leader nicknamed ‘The Savage’ just a day after the nation voted to back an unprecedented crackdown on criminal gangs in the country.
Fabricio Colón Pico, the head of the deadly Los Lobos gang, had been on the run since escaping prison in early January.
But police arrested the 44-year-old this morning in the small town of Puerto Quito in the northern Pichincha region. They shared a mugshot, showing him wearing a dirtied grey top and with dyed blond hair.
He was one of 30 people to have escaped from Riobamba prison in January during a surge of riots and violent attacks by gangs across the nation, taking advantage of the nationwide chaos to walk out of prison.
Fabricio Colón Pico (pictured), the head of the deadly Los Lobos gang, has been on the run since escaping prison in early January
Pico heads up the deadly Los Lobos gang
Gangs have inflicted heavy violence on the country, once considered to be one of the safest in South America
Ecuador has seen a massive surge in gang violence
While twenty of the fugitives were quickly re-arrested following their escape, Pico managed to evade capture for several months.
The sudden surge of violence that gangs in Ecuador, once considered one of South America’s safest countries, has inflicted on the nation led to citizens voting in a slew of unprecedented crackdown measures that give the nation’s armed forces and police increased powers to fight organised crime.
The measures, put forward by 36-year-old president Daniel Noboa, will allow the military to patrol the nation with police.
On top of this, prosecutors will be given more power to extradite convicted druglords, and boost sentences for crimes including terrorism and murder.
Noboa said the government would now ‘have more tools to fight crime and restore peace to Ecuadoran families.’
Gangs like Los Lobos were designated as terrorist groups, and Noboa authorised Ecuador’s military to ‘neutralise’ them in the days after the ‘internal armed conflict.’
Pico’s gang is affiliated with Albanian mobsters who help their South American colleagues to export drugs to West and North Africa, then on to Europe.
Soldiers backing police forces stand guard outside El Inca prison in Quito on January 8, 2024
Inmates remain on the roof of the Turi prison, where prison guards are been held hostage, in Cuenca, Ecuador
A handout photo made available by the Ecuadorian Armed Forces of an intervention by the Litoral Penitentiary, after a riot in the prison center erupted in Guayaquil, Ecuador
Children stand by a voter marking questions on the ballot of a referendum proposed by President Daniel Noboa to endorse new security measures aimed at crack down on criminal gangs fueling escalating violence
As with the other cartels, Los Lobos run drug trafficking operations, making much of their income by moving drugs purchased by Mexican cartels from groups in Colombia, then exporting the product from various ports on Ecuador’s coastline.
But the group also controls much of the illegal mining sector in Ecuador, adding to their already vast wealth.
The gang is also accused of plotting political assassinations, with Ecuador’s attorney-general, Diana Salazar, claiming Pico plotted to kill her.
Los Lobos is also accused of planning and carrying out the assassination of anti-gang presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who was shot dead in August 2023 days before the presidential election while leaving a campaign rally in Quito, the nation’s capital.
Ecuador is situated between world-leading cocaine producers Colombia and Peru, and has become a centre for foreign and domestic drug cartels blamed for a series of gruesome massacres, kidnappings and extortions.
Fishermen have been massacred at ports, maimed bodies have been hanged from bridges and riots have left hundreds dead in prisons.
Prisons in particular have become a hotbed of violence, with the cartels fighting for power inside the country’s jails, from which they then exert vast influence.
Since 2018, the national murder rate has more than quadrupled, soaring from six to 26 per 100,000 inhabitants – a rate that places it in the worst 15 countries.
The country’s National Police tallied 3,568 violent deaths in the first six months of this year, far more than the 2,042 reported during the same period in 2022.
Prisons in particular have become a hotbed of violence, with the cartels fighting for power inside the country’s jails, from which they then exert vast influence
Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa takes part in a referendum on security measures to fight violence
Behind the violence is what the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime describes as a global ‘prolonged surge in both the supply of and demand for cocaine’
That year ended with 4,600 violent deaths, the country’s highest in history and double the total in 2021, with 2023 on track for even more.
Behind the violence is what the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime describes as a global ‘prolonged surge in both the supply of and demand for cocaine’.
As the US market turns to other drugs such as fentanyl, the European market has bolstered demand for the powder, with gangs in the Balkans as well as Italy’s feared ‘Ndrangheta mafia understood to have expanded into Ecuador.
This, according to The Guardian, has supercharged local criminal groups that are accused of using extreme violence, much like that which has been seen carried out by the cartels in Mexico and other Latin American nations in recent decades.