Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has introduced a “strategic alliance” with the Donald Trump-supporting founding father of the non-public army agency Blackwater to supposedly reinforce his controversial “conflict” on crime.
Noboa, the rightwing inheritor to a South American banana empire, introduced the partnership with Erik Prince on social media on Tuesday evening.
“We [have] established a strategic alliance to strengthen our capabilities within the combat in opposition to narco-terrorism and to guard our waters from unlawful fishing,” Noboa tweeted alongside {a photograph} of the 2 males sitting collectively.
“Organized crime has sown concern and believed it could possibly function with impunity. Their time is working out. Worldwide support is starting to circulate to Ecuador,” added the president, who’s in search of re-election within the second spherical of the nation’s presidential election subsequent month.
Ecuador’s president provided no additional particulars of the partnership between his authorities and Prince, a Navy Seal turned multimillionaire safety contractor with shut ties to the Trump administration.
The announcement appeared designed to bolster Noboa’s try and painting himself as an iron-fisted anti-crime crusader forward of the 13 April run-off in opposition to his leftwing rival Luisa González. Noboa’s administration introduced on Sunday a $1m reward for the seize of considered one of Ecuador’s most infamous drug bosses, José Adolfo Macías Villamar, who is understood by the nickname “Fito”.
Noboa launched in January 2024 a hardline crackdown on the home gangs and overseas cartels which have introduced chaos and carnage to what till lately was considered one of South America’s most secure international locations.
Ecuador’s extremely strategic location between two of the world’s high cocaine producers – Peru and Colombia – and its Pacific ports have turned the nation right into a what specialists name a drug “superhighway” ferrying huge portions of the unlawful substance to the US and Europe.
“We’re at conflict and we’re combating in opposition to people who find themselves closely armed, organised, with home and worldwide monetary backing and a construction of terror and criminality that reaches far past Ecuador’s borders,” Noboa mentioned on the time.
However Noboa’s crackdown has didn’t halt the bloodshed and has been plagued with accusations of human rights abuses, together with torture and arbitrary arrests.
The information that Blackwater’s former CEO would be part of Noboa’s marketing campaign prompted outrage and trepidation given the army contractor’s observe report of involvement in abuses, together with the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007, after the US invasion.
“Does he intend to do the identical right here?” Ecuadorian lawyer Marlon Martínez Molina requested on X, accusing Noboa of planning to introduce paramilitarism to the South American nation by importing overseas mercenaries.
“Noboa is the loss of life of Ecuador … there’s no finish to the phobia on this nation,” tweeted the Ecuadorian writer Cristina Burneo.
Activist Soledad Angus Freré additionally voiced despair, warning: “We’re going straight off the cliff.”
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