By Deutsche Welle
The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, rejected the accusation made by his Ecuadorian counterpart, Daniel Noboawhich links him to the Ecuadorian drug trafficker José Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias Fito, in a new episode of the deteriorated relationship between both countries.
“Nothing, I don’t know this Fito or his friends. I have only gone to Ecuador to attend the inauguration of its presidents, and we have captured many bandits born in that country that we have delivered.“Petro wrote on his X account.
The president thus reacted to statements by Noboa in an interview with the Colombian magazine Semana, in which he stated that Petro “met with members of the Citizen Revolution, and some of those members have links with alias Fito,” although he said he could not confirm a direct meeting with that prison leader.
Fito is the leader of the Ecuadorian prison gang Los Choneroswho escaped from a prison in Guayaquil at the beginning of January 2024, an event that unleashed a wave of violence in the country and led Noboa to declare war on drug trafficking groups.
“They let themselves be carried away by lies”
After his recapture in June 2025, he was extradited to the United States on July 20 and became the first major Ecuadorian drug trafficker tried in that country, in a New York court.
Petro also attacked his Ecuadorian counterpart and Colombian political sectors and stated that “what happened to (US President Donald) Trump happens to Noboa, they let the heads of our Colombian extreme right, who are murderers and drug traffickers, be filled with lies.”
The president assured that There is an alleged strategy against him based on unsupported accusations and stated that “the recordings of the Ecuadorian authorities are clear in the order they have received, according to them, from the (US) State Department, to get bandits to accuse me.”
Petro added that he asked Trump to mediate with Noboa during their meeting at the White House on February 3, but that the matter was delegated to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
