The Ecuadorian Government extradited to the United States drug traffickers Celso Miguel Moreira Heredia, alias “Patucho Celso” and Darío Javier Peñafiel Nieto, alias “Topo”, two leaders of Los Choneros, the oldest criminal group operating in the country, according to the Minister of the Interior, John Reimberg.

The men left Ecuador around 11:00 local time on a US Department of Justice plane to New York and "they are already there to pay for the damage they have done not only to the country, but to other countries like the United States," Reimberg added in a press conference held in Guayaquil.

The minister indicated that these extraditions are “part of the cooperation” that the Government has with the United States, and that they already have “other people on the list” that they hope to send “in the coming weeks.”

“This makes me very happy because once again it is shown that these criminals prefer to be extradited today rather than remain in the Cárcel del Encuentro,” said Reimberg, referring to the maximum security prison built at the initiative of President Daniel Noboa and inspired by the prison model of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.

In that prison, about which there are complaints from relatives of prisoners and human rights organizations for alleged torture and lack of food and medical care, criminal and political leaders such as the mayor of Guayaquil, Aquiles Alvarez, and the former Correista vice president Jorge Glas are held.

The senior official said that Patucho Celso and Topo were wanted by the US Justice Department for alleged crimes such as drug trafficking, arms trafficking and others; the same ones for which the top leader of Los Choneros, José Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias “Fito”, was extradited in July of last year, who is now being held in a New York prison awaiting trial.

Topo is considered the second in command of Los Choneros and is the leader of Los Fatales, a faction of this criminal group linked to the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel. He was arrested last September in the Amazonian province of Napo for the alleged crime of arms trafficking and sent to the Cárcel del Encuentro.

While Patucho Celso, also recaptured in September in a coastal area of ​​the country, is called by the Government as the “invisible leader” of Los Choneros, since “he built his power by pulling the strings of this organization, controlling operations and making alliances from clandestinity,” according to what Defense Minister Gian Carlo Loffredo said at the time.

Los Choneros is one of the criminal gangs classified as “terrorists” by the Noboa Government, within the framework of the “war” that it declared in 2024 against these groups, to whom the unprecedented escalation of violence recorded in the Andean country is attributed.

The United States and Argentina have also declared Los Choneros, and their most powerful rival in Ecuador, Los Lobos, “terrorist organizations.”

With information from EFE.