ICE deported an ex-Ecuadorian minister accused of helping a drug cartel murder a presidential candidate back in his home country — even after a US judge blocked his removal over fears he be tortured if returned to the South American nation.
José Serrano, who served as Ecuador’s interior minister under leftist former President Rafael Correa, was deported Friday and promptly mocked by President Daniel Noboa as the newest “guest” of the country’s notorious El Encuentro mega-prison.
“We said it, we delivered. José Serrano, Rafael Correa’s Interior Minister, is the new guest at El Encuentro,” he wrote on X.
Noboa also took a shot at Correa, who ruled from 2007 to 2017 and lives with his family in Belgium, where he was granted asylum.
An Ecuadorian court convicted Correa in absentia in 2020 for receiving bribes for public contracts.
“It’s your turn any moment now. @mashirafael,” Noboa wrote.
Ecuador’s Attorney General’s Office accused Serrano, who was the Interior Minister from 2012 to 2016, and six other people — including Los Lobos cartel leader Wilmer ‘Pipo’ Chavarría — on Aug. 6 for their role in the assassination of Fernando Villavicencio.
Villavicencio was executed Aug. 9, 2023, by six Colombian assassins after a campaign rally in Quito.
The assault took place just 11 days before the first round of the special general elections after the National Assembly was dissolved in May. Incumbent President Guillermo Lasso was eligible to run but chose not to. --->READ MORE HERE
José Serrano was deported from the United States and was detained in the maximum-security prison El Encuentro
The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, released this Saturday the first prison images of José Serrano, former Minister of the Interior during the socialist government of Rafael Correa, who was deported from the United States and is now held in the maximum-security prison El Encuentro while the case investigating him as an alleged mastermind behind the assassination of former presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio progresses.
Serrano arrived in Ecuador on the night of Friday, August 28, after landing shortly after 11:00 PM at José Joaquín de Olmedo airport in Guayaquil. Hours later, under a heavy police operation, he was transferred to the prison located in Santa Elena, where the former correísta vice president Jorge Glas is also detained.
Noboa publicly confirmed the former official's entry into prison with a photograph showing Serrano inside a cell dressed in the orange uniform of the penitentiary system. The president accompanied the post with a single word: “Done”.
Previously, the Ecuadorian president had celebrated the transfer with a message directed directly at correísmo. “We said it, we did it. José Serrano, Correa's Minister of the Interior, a new guest at El Encuentro. It's your turn next”, wrote Noboa, in an explicit reference to former president Rafael Correa.
The Minister of the Interior, John Reimberg, also highlighted the detention and assured that someone who was considered “untouchable” ended up confined in El Encuentro, while emphasizing that no one is above the law in Ecuador. --->READ MORE HERE
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