Lieutenant of Ecuador's biggest drug trafficker extradited to US captured

(AFP) - The lieutenant of drug trafficker alias Fito, Ecuador's most powerful drug lord extradited by President Daniel Noboa to the United States, was captured Saturday, the government said.

Dario Javier Peñafiel, known as Topo, was arrested in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where he was allegedly coordinating the illegal extraction of minerals, by a special bloc of the security forces created by the president in his war against drug trafficking.

The man was the leader of Los Choneros, which disputes with Los Lobos for the position of main criminal gang in Ecuador, a country in which various criminal groups that traffic cocaine operate. Both criminal organizations were recently declared terrorist organizations by the US.

Interior Minister John Reimberg said at a press conference that Topo has ties to a dissident faction of the Colombian FARC guerrilla group, which demobilized in 2017 after a peace agreement.

Peñafiel is wanted by a New York court for drug trafficking and money laundering, so in a "very short time" he will be extradited, he added. For the time being, he will remain in a prison in the port of Guayaquil.

Fito's team is reduced

Fito, considered the narco with the most power in Ecuador, was recaptured in June in a mega-operation when he was hiding in a bunker he ordered built under a house in Manabi province.

He later agreed to be extradited to New York, where he pleaded "not guilty" at his first appearance.

Topo "will be keeping Fito company very soon in the United States," Reimberg said.

Fito was the first Ecuadorian extradited to the US following a referendum pushed by President Noboa to reform the law amid his tough-on-crime policy. According to the minister, Peñafiel would be the fourth Ecuadorian citizen sent to a U.S. prison in this way.

The escape of alias Fito from a prison in 2024 led Noboa to declare an internal "armed conflict" in Ecuador, which is still in force and allows him to deploy the armed forces in streets and prisons. That measure has earned him harsh criticism from human rights organizations.