Quito: Ecuador claimed Monday the arrest of a wanted cocaine trafficker from neighboring Colombia, as President Daniel Noboa stated that his government’s campaign on gang violence was beginning to bear fruit.
Carlos Arturo Landazuri Cortes, a “high-value target,” was apprehended overnight following months of investigations and intelligence gathering, according to Ecuador’s police chief Cesar Augusto Zapata on X.
Landazuri, known as “El Gringo,” is the leader of the Oliver Sinisterra Front, a drug-dealing dissident faction of Colombia’s now-defunct FARC guerrillas.
Aside from drug smuggling, he was suspected of being involved in the kidnapping and murder of three Ecuadorian journalists in 2018, as well as a bomb attack in the country’s northwest that injured 28 police personnel.
