Escuadrones volantes
Elite squads operating in Ecuador in the '80s
The Escuadrones volantes, also known as Escuadrones de la muerte, were elite units of the National Police of Ecuador that were created in May 1985 by conservative President León Febres-Cordero Ribadeneyra. The units launched a systematic, government-backed campaign of human rights violations and acts of torture in the name of fighting crime and subversion. According to a report submitted by the Truth Commission—created in 2007 by the Office of the Attorney General of Ecuador—during the three years that they were in operation, the mobile squads perpetrated 32 extrajudicial killings, 12 attacks, and 9 enforced disappearances, and were involved in 214 cases of unlawful imprisonment, 275 acts of torture, and 72 cases of sexual abuse.
Among the most notorious crimes perpetrated by the mobile squads are those of the Restrepo Arismendi brothers, Professor Consuelo Benavides, and blue-collar worker Jaime Otavalo, as well as Arturo Jarrín and Fausto Basantes, leaders of subversive groups. Febres-Cordero always refused to assume responsibility for the crimes and claimed not to have authorized any of the instances of torture or murder. However, Juan Vela—who was a member of the Social Christian Party along with Febres-Cordero during the latter’s administration—confessed to the Truth Commission that the former president had given the order to carry out acts of torture.
The mobile squads were eliminated in 1988 by President Rodrigo Borja Cevallos, who succeeded Febres-Cordero.
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This entry incorporates text from “Escuadrones volantes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.