Ecuador has freed Andrés Fernando Tufiño, one of the two survivors in the Caribbean Sea on October 16, as confirmed this Monday by an Ecuadorian Government official cited by the Associated Press (AP) agency. The man, who escaped the bombing along with a Colombian, was captured by the US Navy and later deported to Ecuador. According to the official, who has asked not to be identified, the Prosecutor’s Office of that country did not find sufficient evidence to take legal action against her.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, reported on Saturday on his social network, Truth, of a new attack in the Caribbean Sea. It is the sixth extrajudicial operation that the United States has launched against vessels from South America. “We have attacked a submarine. It was specially designed for the mass transportation of drugs. It’s just so you understand. It was not a group of innocent people. I don’t know how many people have submarines,” he then told the press. , the first since the beginning of these assaults last August. The men were captured and were identified as Andrés Fernando Tufiño, of Ecuadorian nationality; and Jeison Obando Pérez, Colombian. Trump announced that both would be repatriated to their respective countries, where they would be taken for “detention and processing.”
According to a government document to which AP has had access, “there are no elements of conviction or indications that could lead the fiscal or judicial authority to be certain” that Tufiño committed a crime in Ecuadorian territory, so, after being medically discharged, he was released.
The man is originally from the province of Esmeraldas, bordering Colombia, where fishing is the most widespread economic activity, but which has been affected by drug trafficking. Although Tufiño has no criminal record, his immigration record is quite peculiar: he records more arrivals than departures and he had already been deported to Ecuador from Los Angeles.
Although the Ecuadorian cannot be judged by the laws of his country, he reaffirmed this Monday in an X publication addressed to Trump that “Ecuador remains firm in the global fight against drug trafficking and illegal mining.” “Our commitment is clear: fight side by side, defending freedom and prosperity throughout our region,” he said in the message, written in English.
For his part, Pérez remains under observation after arriving in his country. The Colombian Minister of the Interior, Armando Benedetti, noted that the man “arrived with brain trauma, sedated, doped, breathing with a ventilator, and was treated by the authorities.” Benedetti assured in a video shared on social networks that Pérez “will be prosecuted according to justice, because he is allegedly a criminal who was trafficking drugs.” Tufiño’s precedent now leaves this up in the air.
In September, the US Government began an operation of extrajudicial attacks in international waters of the Caribbean against vessels that it accuses of transporting drugs from Venezuela to the coasts of the United States. The military has killed, without trial, more than 30 people whom the Trump Administration accuses of belonging to criminal gangs such as the Tren de Aragua, included by the State Department on its list of “designated terrorist organizations,” or the Cartel of the Suns.
