Six men suspected of involvement in the murder in August of Ecuador’s anti-corruption presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio were killed in prison on Friday, the prisons agency said, barely a week before a crucial run-off election.
The killings took place in a penitentiary in Guayaquil, the South American country’s largest city, the attorney general’s office announced earlier on Friday.
Ecuador’s government swiftly condemned the killings.
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Outgoing President Guillermo Lasso pledged “neither complicity nor cover-up” in getting to the bottom of the killings, in a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Here the truth will be known,” he said.
The SNAI prisons agency said in a statement the six men were all Colombian nationals. It gave no more details of the killings.
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The government has said authorities are determined to identify those behind Villavicencio’s murder.
Villavicencio, a prominent journalist, was gunned down less than two weeks before a first round general election as he left a campaign event in the capital, Quito.
Police arrested the six Colombians on the day of Villavicencio’s assassination. A seventh suspect, also Colombian, was shot and killed by police, while other suspects were later arrested.
The second round run-off vote is scheduled for Oct. 15, the culmination of an election cycle marred by numerous incidents of violence.
By Reuters