Young Ecuadorian football players mourn the disappearance and murder of four children from Guayaquil. Photo: X/@veropotes.
At the end of 2024, Ecuador found itself in suspense over the disappearance of four children in Guayaquil at the hands of the National Army, which has been on high alert and patrolling the streets of the city since President Daniel Noboa declared an internal conflict against drug trafficking groups.
A video that went viral on social media shows how the four minors were detained, beaten, and then loaded into a military van on December 8, 2024. The parents of the missing children launched a nationwide campaign to discover the whereabouts of the children. After several days of uncertainty, the Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that four charred remains found near Taura, in Naranjal, matched the DNA records of the four missing Afro-Ecuadorian minors: Steven Medina, Josué Arroyo, Ismael Arroyo, and Nehemías Arboleda.
“They were shot in the head and the back”
Thanks to the autopsy information to which the Permanent Committee of Human Rights (CDH) had access, it has been known that the four minors were shot before being burned, a technique used to hinder postmortem investigations.
CDH lawyer Fernando Bastidas told the news outlet Primicias: “The results are inconclusive, but it does affirm the existence of bullet impacts in at least three of the boys, in the case of Steven due to putrefaction it was not possible to identify. The expert clarifies that it cannot be ruled out or confirmed, but if the other three bodies were in the same condition, we consider that he had suffered the same fate as the other three… But reviewing the report of the four bodies we conclude that they were shot from behind, which caused the death of the boys.”
Who killed them?
Several forensic experts confirm one of the most probable and painful hypotheses: the children were executed from behind. According to the soldiers’ defense team, the four minors were left unharmed on the road. The defense blamed the death of the minors on an alleged criminal gang, Las Águilas. They have implied that the gang intercepted the children and killed them. In fact, on March 31, the police captured Bryan Alvarado, an alleged leader of Las Águilas, and he was accused as the mastermind and perpetrator of the murder of the four children.
However, several relatives of the children have questioned this hypothesis and hold the military, who illegally captured them, responsible for the tragic end of their children. For this reason, they have requested that the autopsy report be expanded on the cause of death of the minors; specifically, they want to know with certainty if there were acts of torture which the report seems to suggest (“injuries to the thorax and skull”) but does not categorically state.
On this point, Bastidas said to Primicias, “We have the right to request extensions and clarifications, and one of the extensions that we are going to ask is about the indetermination of the cause of death, as a main conclusion that the expert witness points out due to the state of putrefaction and carbonization of the bodies… [The forensic report] concludes that there is no evidence of torture, [although] in the case of Steven it indicates that there was a strong blow to the chest and head, which did not cause major damage, but that it happened while he was alive. This makes us conclude that there were blows and injuries in the context of the detention.”
Currently, the 16 soldiers involved in the events are under preventive detention, accused of forced disappearance, while the investigations and the trial advance. The Prosecutor’s Office has also included in the indictment a lieutenant colonel of the Air Force for allegedly covering up key evidence. Both President Daniel Noboa and Secretary of Defense Loffredo have tepidly condemned the events while supporting several military personnel who may have been involved.
(People’s Dispatch) by Pablo Meriguet
