Ecuador said Saturday Colombian neo-paramilitary group “Aguilas Negras” is the perpetrator of the Friday kidnapping of an Australian and a British tourist who were rescued the next day.
The two women were rescued by police authorities in Sucumbios province bordering Colombia where they had been kidnapped on Friday while traveling by canoe.
Ecuador’s Environment Ministry said in a statement that “according to personnel in the region, the attack was carried out by three members of the self-called Aguilas Negras,” a feared Colombian right-wing militia formed by members of the demobilized paramilitary AUC around 2005.
“Our travel advice for Ecuador recommends that Australians do not travel to the border area of Sucumbios in northeastern Ecuador, bordering Colombia and Peru, as there is a very high threat of violent criminal activity in this area,” an official of Australia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry told newspaper the Australian.
U.K. newspaper the Guardian reported that the perpetrators of the kidnapping escaped.
The Aguilas Negras is one of several Colombian criminal organizations active on the Ecuadorean border. The most prominent illegal armed groups in the region are the “Rastrojos,” the FARC and the ELN.
