Fernando Villavicencio’s wife accuses the state and Correísmo of the murder

Verónica Sarauz, the wife of Fernando Villavicencio, Ecuador’s presidential candidate who was assassinated last Wednesday, this Saturday blamed the state for her husband’s death for lack of protection and correísmo.

“The state is directly responsible for the murder of my husband, Fernando Villavicencio,” Sarauz said at a news conference in Quito, who according to the candidate’s immediate family had been separated from him for six years.

Sarauz assured that the “state has a lot of answers to what happened” and denounced the lack of protective measures against the one who was still her husband, who was shot several times as he left a meeting at a school in late Wednesday afternoon. Quito. .

“I don’t want to think that they sold my husband to be killed in a notorious way,” suspected the Ecuadorian, who provided no evidence about the complaints against the state and against Correísmo, of which Villavicencio had become his staunch enemy. following the complaints he has made against them.

“I want to tell Correísmo (…) that they are all responsible, if not directly or indirectly, for the death of my husband, but it was in this government that my husband died and it is the one who must give explanations,” argued Sarauz, who arrived at the press conference wearing a body armor and helmet and flanked by a security guard carrying a rifle.

Former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) has on several occasions strongly denied having anything to do with the assassination, for which six Colombians have been provisionally arrested, accused of being the alleged hitmen who committed the crime.

And there is still no clarity on who is behind the crime, but there is speculation that it could be one of the criminal gangs operating in the country and that the candidate himself denounced direct threats days before his death and specifically referred to “Fito”, identified by authorities as the leader of “Los Choneros”.

A seventh man, also a Colombian national, died the same day of the attack as a result, according to Ecuadorian authorities, of the injuries sustained from the exchange of shots between the attackers and the security personnel protecting Villavicencio.

Nine other people were also injured in the attack, five of whom are in stable condition at the Women’s Clinic, where Villavicencio also arrived in a “serious” condition, preventing health personnel from saving his life, a report said. health centre.

Villavicencio was one of eight candidates registered to succeed the current president, the conservative Guillermo Lasso, in the extraordinary elections to be held for this Sunday, August 20, with the winner completing the period 2021-2025, interrupted by Lasso as he left the National Assembly (Parliament), with an opposition majority, as it prepared to vote on his resignation.

The journalist and former councilor was killed as part of an election campaign that before the attack had been practically the only topic of conversation about the security crisis that has plagued Ecuador for more than two years, with recurrent killings and massacres that the government has blamed on organized crime and drug trafficking .