By Alexandra Valencia
QUITO (Reuters) -Ecuadorean police said on Wednesday that two alleged criminal leaders involved in the storming of a TV station early this year have been captured after an operation in Spain, where they had been staying on false papers.
“Commander Willy,” the alleged leader of Los Tiguerones, and his brother Alex, who is believed by authorities to be the second-in-command in the criminal group, were arrested in a joint operation with the Spanish Guardia Civil, Ecuadorean police said on social media platform X.
Ecuadorean authorities do not include surnames when naming suspects in active criminal cases, but local media identified them as William and Alex Alcivar.
Police said the two men were accused of planting car bombs, carrying out contract killings, extortion and an infamous live on-air attack on the TC television studio in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, in January this year.
During the raid, which was broadcast nationally for about 20 minutes, viewers watched 13 men in balaclavas and armed with guns, grenades and dynamite, accost staff who huddled on the floor. Police later rescued the staff and arrested the men.
The attack prompted the government to name 22 gangs as terrorist organizations to be hunted by the military in a broad-ranging crackdown on crime.
Los Tiguerones is one of 22 groups, which local media has reported as being responsible for drug trafficking and extortion in the South American nation’s coastal provinces of Guayas and Esmeraldas.
The brothers are also accused of the murder of an Ecuadorean prosecutor who was investigating their crimes, police added.
Spain’s Guardia Civil said the arrests took place in the Segur de Calafell, a small Catalonian town some 60 km (37 miles) west of Barcelona.
“The investigation began after information was obtained that indicated the leader had been living in Catalonia for years,” the law enforcement agency said, adding that Alcivar had continued to direct the organization’s activities from Spain.
(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia in Quito and Andrey Khalip in LisbonWriting by Sarah MorlandEditing by Paul Simao, Sharon Singleton and Matthew Lewis)
