Ecuador: Moreno Accepts Resignation of Ministers Navas, Zambrano as Deadline to Capture Guacho Expires

Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno has accepted the resignation of Cesar Navas, minister of the interior, and Patricio Zambrano, minister of defense, the communications secretariat announced Friday.

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The president had charged the two ministers with capturing Walter Patricio Artizala Vernaza alias “El Guacho,” the head an armed group allegedly responsible for carrying out several attacks against Ecuadorean police and military offices and officials, as well as kidnapping five people.

The official 10-day deadline for his capture expired Thursday, April 26.

The most widely covered action by the group, which is believed to operate in the southern Colombian department of Nariño, was the kidnapping of three members of the staff of local newspaper El Comercio in late March.

Navas was the official government spokesperson and was charged with managing the country's response to the kidnapping along with Zambrano. Three days after the Ecuadorean government confirmed the death of the three men, Navas announced two more people, Oscar Villacis and Katty Velasco, had been kidnapped by the same group.  

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Navas was honored by the country's police commander Thursday, the same day the deadline, which coincided with the one month anniversary of the kidnapping of Javier Ortega, Paul Rivas, Efrain Segarra, expired.

Since the latest kidnapping, the Ecuadorean government has not announced a rescue mission or ongoing negotiations with the kidnappers. Instead, the government has focused on militarizing the border and reaching bilateral security cooperation agreements with Colombia and the United States.

On Wednesday, two days before his resignation, Navas signed an agreement with the U.S. to fight transnational organized crime and drug trafficking. Under the agreement, the U.S. is expected to open a military office in the Andean country.

According to the official press statement issued Friday, the president will announce who will be the new minister of the interior and defense.