According to government sources, Intelligence officials in Ecuador had been on the fugitive drug lord’s trail for more than a year in a high-priority operation they called “Zeus II.”
They looked for José Adolfo Macías Villamar in multiple countries — at one point, they believed he was hiding over the border, in a remote part of Colombia.
Instead, the notorious gang leader, also known as “Fito” was holed up in a luxurious marble-walled home authorities had already raided at least three times, along the Ecuadorian coast he had long controlled, enjoying a home gym and indoor pool.
Security forces knew they were close last month when they discovered, in a raid of the house, his 3-year-old daughter and the medications they knew he took for gastritis.
But as they tear-gassed the property, the Choneros leader was nowhere to be found.
They suspected a hidden bunker. They would have to dig beneath the house.
“Go in, with faith,” a supervisor had told a police official leading the intelligence operation. “Search however you can. Use all the means we have. But we have to find him.”
As security forces dug, Fito became fearful the bunker would cave in on him. He emerged from a secret door in a laundry room floor and into the gunsight of a soldier.
The capture was a symbolic victory for President Daniel Noboa, the millennial business heir who won re-election this year on promises to contain the criminal violence that has turned this once-peaceful South American nation into a narcotrafficking battleground.
Noboa had declared war on the gangs last year, days after Fito’s escape from a prison in Guayaquil.
