A prosecutor investigating femicide in Ecuador was killed by gunmen this Monday (19) outside the Public Ministry headquarters in the port of Guayaquil – briefed the judicial authority.
Édgar Escobar, who served in the unit responsible for hate crimes and crimes against gender-based women, was “shot this morning” in front of the building where he worked.
According to the organization, two of the alleged attackers were arrested during an operation in a slum in Guayaquil. This community is suffering from a wave of crime linked to drug trafficking, which has reached prisons with hundreds of deaths in massacres.
“A motorcycle and a gun were seized in the police action, with which they could shoot the victim,” the deputy said.
Escobar’s murder coincides with the scandal of the disappearance of 34-year-old lawyer María Belén Bernal from a police station in Quito.
A week ago, the woman entered Escola Superior de Polícia (ESP) to visit her husband, Lieutenant Germán Cáceres. Since then, there is no information about his whereabouts.
Faced with the suspicion that it might be a woman’s murder, the lieutenant made a judicial statement. She was considered a fugitive after that. The government dismissed Cáceres and removed the head of the Officer Training School.
The rate of gender-based violence is high in Ecuador. According to the Public Ministry, at least 573 women have been killed in cases classified as femicide since 2014. According to Geraldine Guerra of Fundación Aldea, an institution that maps femicide in the country, there were 206 femicides in 2022 alone.
source: Noticias
