Ecuador’s most infamous drug lord has agreed to be extradited to the United States to face cocaine and weapons smuggling charges, a court in the capital Quito has said.
The announcement on Friday is the latest chapter in the dramatic underworld tale of Adolfo Macias, alias “Fito”, who was recaptured in June after escaping from a maximum security prison 18 months ago in a jailbreak that triggered a bloody wave of gang violence.
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Macias, head of the “Los Choneros” gang, is wanted in the US on charges of cocaine distribution, conspiracy and firearms-related crimes, including weapons smuggling.
After Macias vanished from his prison cell in the southwestern port of Guayaquil in January 2024, authorities had been scouring the world for him, offering a $1m reward for information leading to his capture. But it emerged that the country’s most wanted man was hiding out at a family member’s mansion in his hometown.
Ecuadorian security forces recaptured the drug kingpin last month at an underground bunker beneath a marble-walled house in the port city of Manta, some 260km (160 miles) southwest of the capital, Quito.
The former taxi-driver-turned-crime-boss had been serving a 34-year sentence since 2011 for involvement in organised crime, drug trafficking and murder.
In a country plagued by drug-related crime, Los Choneros members responded with violence as the manhunt began after their leader’s escape – using car bombs, holding prison guards hostage and storming a television station during a live broadcast.
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President Daniel Noboa’s right-wing government had recently declared, “We will gladly send him and let him answer to the North American law.”
Macias, dressed in an orange prison uniform, took part in a court hearing Friday via videolink from a high-security prison in Guayaquil.
In response to a judge’s question, he replied, “Yes, I accept (extradition).”
This would make Macias the first Ecuadorian extradited by his country since the measure was written into law last year, after a referendum in which Noboa sought the approval of measures to boost his war on criminal gangs.
Ecuador, once a peaceful haven wedged between the world’s two top cocaine exporters, Colombia and Peru, has seen violence erupt in recent years as rival gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.
These gang wars have largely played out inside the country’s prisons, where Macias wielded immense control. He was the unofficial boss of his Guayaquil prison, where authorities found images glorifying him, weapons and US dollars.
Videos of parties he held in the prison captured fireworks and a mariachi band. In one sequence, he appeared waving, laughing and petting a fighting rooster.
Macias earned a law degree behind bars. By the time he escaped, he was considered a suspect in the assassination of presidential candidate and anticorruption crusader Fernando Villavicencio in 2023.
Soon after Macias’s prison break, 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.
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 Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory.
More than 70 percent of all cocaine produced in the world now passes through Ecuador’s ports, according to government data. In 2024, the country seized a record 294 tonnes of drugs, mainly cocaine.
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