Ecuador: "Fito," the country's biggest drug trafficker, will be extradited to the United States

Ecuador's biggest drug trafficker, Adolfo Macias, nicknamed "Fito," agreed on Friday, July 11, to be extradited to the United States, where prosecutors accuse him of cocaine and arms trafficking, the South American country's National Court of Justice announced.

Considered one of Ecuador's most dangerous criminals, "Fito" was arrested in late June in his hometown of Manta, 350 km southwest of the capital, Quito, after a year and a half on the run. He escaped in January 2024 from the Guayaquil penitentiary, where he had been serving a thirty-four-year prison sentence since 2011 for organized crime, drug trafficking, and murder.

Dressed in the orange prison uniform and with a trimmed beard, "Fito" attended the hearing from his cell via videoconference on Friday and told the judge: "Yes, I accept [the extradition]. " This decision paves the way for his transfer. "Once the extradition (...) is accepted, the procedure for his transfer to the United States will follow its course," the court said in a statement.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa must now order the surrender of "Fito" to US justice. Adolfo Macias will become the first Ecuadorian to be extradited since the country reinstated this procedure by referendum in 2024, a measure championed by Daniel Noboa in his fight against organized crime.

The leader of one of the country's main gangs, the Choneros, which notably rules over cocaine trafficking, " Fito" has been linked to the assassination, in August 2023, of one of the main candidates in the Ecuadorian presidential election, Fernando Villavicencio.

His escape in early 2024 triggered an unprecedented wave of violence in the country , killing dozens of people and leading to prison riots and gang-related street fighting. Noboa declared the country to be in "internal armed conflict" and deployed the army to try to neutralize the twenty or so criminal groups involved.

Due to its location between Colombia and Peru – the world's largest cocaine producers – and its strategic ports on the Pacific, Ecuador has in recent years become the scene of violent clashes over the control of territories destined for the transport of cocaine, the main destinations of which are the United States and Europe.