Ecuador’s government will repatriate some 1,500 Colombian prisoners in an attempt to combat organized crime.
The mass deportation of convicts follows an outburst of violence by illegal armed groups in January.
Attacks on a university and a television station spurred Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa to declare an internal armed conflict and repatriate foreign convicted prisoners.
Almost 5% of Ecuador’s 31,300 prisoners is Colombian, according to media reports.
The director of Colombia’s prison authority INPEC, Colonel Daniel Gutierrez, said Wednesday that Ecuadorean authorities have yet to provide Bogota with information about prisoners that would be repatriated.
“They have said there are 1,500, but we have no real information or how many there really are,” Gutierrez told press.
According to Justice Minister Nestor Osuna, existing directives regarding repatriation only allows Quito to release foreign prisoners, which would allow them to possibly enter Colombia as free men.
Osuna said that foreign ministry officials from both countries “never talked about expulsion or deportation” in talks about an international response to the organized crime crisis in Ecuador, said Osuna.
“Colombia’s problem,” said Noboa, who insisted there would be a “mass expulsion” of prisoners, who would also be given an entry ban to the neighboring country.