Relatives of Fernando Villavicencio, the candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador who was assassinated last Wednesday, denounced this Friday that his wife does not let them enter the funeral home where the wake is installed.

The body of Villavicencio, who was shot to death on Wednesday afternoon as he left a rally at a school, has been lying since Thursday in a funeral home in the north of Quito where he was transferred after an autopsy was carried out at the Centro of Legal Medicine.

During the afternoon of Thursday, the mortal remains of Villavicencio were watched over exclusively by the family and close relatives.

However, Villavicencio's niece assured the media at the gates of the funeral home that, along with other members of her family, including the mother and two of the deceased's daughters, from a previous marriage, they have not been able to enter the chapel. of vigil.

“The lady (Verónica Sarauz, the last wife) is not even part of the family, we want to be with them, they have not allowed us to watch over her since yesterday,” said the niece, Nina Osorio to the media.

The young woman, who returned from Spain on Thursday, asks that “they allow him to watch over him with dignity and affection”, since he assures that they have “kidnapped” him.

“If I had died, I would not have allowed my body to be kidnapped,” Osorio said from one side of the entrance gate, while his sister denounced that they have been denied access to the parents and yelled for entry.

The family denies “the kidnapping”

Tamia Villavicencio, one of the eldest daughters of the former candidate, denied, from outside the entrance gate where they have not allowed her access for a while, that it was a “kidnapping”, but that “it is a matter of hours” that they can see the deceased and for the safety surrounding the family after the murder.

“Understand that she (Verónica Sarauz) is very sensitive, she still cannot understand what is happening,” said the young woman, who improvised a song for her father at the doors of the funeral home.

Relatives still do not know where Villavicencio will be buried and fear they too will be denied access to the ceremony, despite the tragedy.

In principle, a tribute to the candidate is scheduled for noon this Friday, one of the eight who had registered to succeed the current president, the conservative Guillermo Lasso, in the extraordinary elections called for next Sunday, August 20.

Attempt

The attack also left at least nine injured, five of whom are in stable condition at the Women's Clinic, according to a statement from the medical center where Villavicencio also arrived “in a sudden condition” and where they failed to save his life.

For their part, the Ecuadorian authorities have arrested six people, all of them Colombians, on suspicion of being the perpetrators of the crime, who are in pretrial detention by court order, but it is still unknown who may have ordered the murder.

According to the Ecuadorian authorities, a seventh man who died after being wounded during the exchange of fire between the attackers and the security personnel guarding Villavicencio was also Colombian.

Kiruna, a city of 23,000 inhabitants in Sweden very close to the Arctic, will have a new location due to the discovery of what could be the largest rare earth mine in Europe right next to the iron mine in the city itself.

Its new location will be located about 3 kilometers away. There, in what is nicknamed 'New Kiruna', it is intended to move building by building all the buildings in the city, a total of 450,000 square meters of public, residential, commercial and leisure buildings.. Among them, the local Lutheran church, built in 1912.

The process will also be long.. It is estimated that everything will not be finished moving until 2035 and, despite the fact that the inhabitants want to continue preserving their tradition, they also hope that the new place will have more pedestrian areas and easier access to nature to carry out all kinds of activities. outdoor activities.

Kiruna was built about 125 years ago precisely to house the employees who worked in the industrial complex in the area.. Its inhabitants are spread over 20,000 square kilometers and around 6,000 lakes, seven rivers and a large amount of forests.

The largest rare earth mine

The reason for its relocation is due to what could be the largest rare earth mine on the European continent. According to the mining company LKAB, it could contain some 585 million tons of ore, with at least one million tons of praseodymium or neodymium oxides, essential materials for making electric vehicles.

Even so, its exploitation will not be immediate and could take between 10 and 15 years, but it could mean a huge advance for Sweden in terms of ecological transition.. According to Ebba Busch, the Swedish Minister for Energy, Trade and Industry, “electrification, the self-sufficiency of the European Union and the independence of Russia and China will begin in the mine.”

With the new city, the Swedish government hopes to build a city designed to pay special attention to the environment, with more efficient buildings and a series of sustainable mobility solutions.

Although it poses a challenge for the authorities and its inhabitants, the works represent a further step in a country that wants to create energy communities “committed to making a difference” and for a government that in 2030 expects to reduce 70% of carbon dioxide emissions carbon from transport.

Daniel Sancho will be placed in ordinary detention on August 17, as reported by the head of the Koh Samui prison, Watcharapong Boonsaior, where he is in provisional detention after having confessed to the murder of Edwin Arrieta. “He will remain there until the court has decided the case,” he said in a statement.. From that day, Thai law begins to count a maximum of 84 days for the trial of the case to take place, so it should take place in early November.

A Russian missile struck the hotel used by UN staff in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia on Thursday night, Reuters reports.. On the other hand, the nuclear power plant currently occupied by Russian troops has begun to put its number four reactor in a cold shutdown situation after detecting a water leak in one of the steam generators, without detecting a radioactivity emission, reported the IAEA.

The candidate for the presidency of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, arrives at this interview with 20 minutes “dodging the bullets”. He says it sarcastically, but at the same time knowing that this is the harsh reality that plagues Ecuador. In the last four weeks, four politicians have been assassinated in this South American country. On July 17, Rider Sánchez, a candidate for the National Assembly, was the victim of crime; on the 23rd it was the turn of Agustín Intriago, mayor of Manta; on August 3, the bullets hit Miguel Santos Burgos, director of land for the municipality of Durán; and this Wednesday a group of assassins ended the life of Fernando Villavicencio, candidate for the presidency.

After the murder of Villavicencio, a state of emergency and military mobilization have been decreed to guarantee security. In addition, the homicide occurs in the middle of the electoral campaign, since the presidential elections are called for next Sunday, August 20.. It also happens in the midst of a wave of violence fueled by drug trafficking, unemployment and other factors explained by the candidate for the ADN alliance in this interview. In fact, he comments that, despite living in a tourist area, the underworld has reached a few streets away from his house and that his family is forced to go out into the streets with 14 armed bodyguards.

The worst of an attack is the death of people, because nothing can compare in the price of human life. The sad count of the bombing of Pokrovsk is 9 dead and 82 wounded. a huge tragedy. But living beings are not the only victims, so are the places that gave a sense of safety and the memories related to them.. Some symbolic sites that the Russians, at some point, considered to be military targets.

Despite the fact that its name hinted at it, that Hotel Druzhba (friendship, in Ukrainian) for “friendly” had very little. There one could return to the Soviet past just by entering the door, not so much for the reform or for its furniture, but for the treatment of customers. That has at least been the stereotype that the people of the generation born after Ukraine escaped from that “prison of nations” called the USSR have always had.. Only the absence of private property can explain this utter indifference to the welfare of the paying customer.

The woman, behind a high table, did not bother to smile.. With his attitude he showed you that making you feel at home (or at least welcome) was not on the list of his job duties. “They always reproached you for something,” comments Sergiy, one of the most famous photographers of this war, on his Facebook, who admits that his colleagues called him “the hostile hotel.”

It's not an exaggeration. That a lock breaks and you cannot rescue your things from a warehouse was the client's fault. They would tell you off for asking for the shampoo that they had forgotten to leave in a luxury room where, by the way, none of the plugs worked and at four in the morning you could hear the pipes hissing. After a few nights in Avdiivka, you hid in the bathroom and only after a few minutes realized that you were already in Pokrovsk, a city at a relatively safe distance, about 45 kilometers from the front.

At night, the chatter and sighs of other customers kept you from sleeping through walls that looked like cardboard. Asking for a towel in the standard room was a crime, since according to “internal instruction” only two towels were given for two people (one small and one large).. Even asking for a glass of water at breakfast became a challenge.. It seemed like a bad joke. – Could I ask for a glass of water? – In the water dispenser. – It is empty. – So there is no water, a woman who worked in the kitchen answered you. Meanwhile, despite any logic, this hotel was almost always full of people.

Upon hearing the name of this site, journalists would laugh, make jokes or, on occasions, make worrying comments. “We no longer sleep there, one day the Russians are going to bomb it, you'll see”, said the Radio Liberty journalists while we celebrated their last exclusive report from the Bakhmut trenches, mixing whiskey with beer, in one of the city's apartments from Pokrovsk.

Psychologists say that people look for their tribe in moments of danger out of pure instinct.. We always get together with people who chose in this life a profession related to war: doctors, volunteers, journalists.. We did it in places like Buena Vista, a bar in the center of kyiv with a poetic name that was located underground while the Russians did not stop trying to conquer the capital.. There, despite the dry law, we drank mojitos. “Volunteers? no way. They are Mossad agents”, a renowned journalist commented to his professional colleagues, who remembered the liberation of the Kiev region and that song that Olga, a famous girl in the Ukrainian salsa community, sang live.. That song was “Lágrimas negras”.

In the Donetsk region, these meeting places were, for example, the Ria pizzeria in Kramatorsk, bombed on June 27.. A rocket that fell in the kitchen killed the workers of this restaurant and claimed the life of the writer Victoria Amelina. In Pokrovsk, it was “the hostile hotel” and a restaurant in the style of the Corleone mafia…

“Mushroom soup, pancakes with banana and chocolate and a cappuccino”. A guy in his early twenties was always coming up to my table.. The Corleone service was in stark contrast to “the hostile hotel”, but they were joined by the people who congregated there. “We need to pick up the ambulance for the trenches… Here is the list of all the things that are needed: the turnstiles, especially”, medic Rebecca instructed other volunteers before they left for the trenches, while sharing a huge pizza with them. At the next table, the journalists were interviewing a unit that apparently had dressed in their best recently bought clothes to recount battles that, in that place, seemed very far away.. Another boy would make a scene at his girlfriend, explaining that he wanted to leave Pokrovsk and had no desire to participate in the war.

“I hated this hotel, I don't understand why I suddenly feel so affected. As if they had tried to take something important away from me”, comments another journalist after the attack on the Druzhba hotel and the Corleone pizzeria.

There was something good in this hotel: the hidden hugs between the soldiers and their wives, the chocolates in the hall that saved you from hunger after curfew and the new friends made in the shared bathrooms. In one of the cheaper rooms, a woman could be heard all night talking to someone and walking around for hours.

In the end I went out into the hallway angry.

– Lady, what's wrong with you? I'm sleeping, can you speak quieter?

– Sorry, I didn't know someone was there.

I noticed that the woman in her 75s didn't have a phone.. I saw her alone in the room with almost no things, she was pacing there and talking to herself.

– I am from Avdiivka, I escaped from there a few days ago and they told me that I could stay here. I can't stand this silence. You can sit down for a while and talk to me.

I shared with her my food and water. She told me about the pain of losing her home, and how the hostile hotel became her refuge.

When I was leaving the hotel I heard the voice of the receptionist who was always angry and never smiled: “Everything alright, my Olguita?”. Maybe the hotel wasn't so hostile.

The six arrested for the murder of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio are Colombian nationals, as well as the man who died at the scene, Ecuadorian police sources confirmed to EFE.

So far, the authorities have revealed that several men participated in the murder of Villavicencio, allegedly hitmen, who the Minister of the Interior, Juan Zapata, in statements to the press this Thursday, identified as Andrés M., José L., Adey G. , Camilo R., Jules C.. and JohnR.

In addition, the Police also confirmed that the murder suspect who was injured by the crossing of bullets with security personnel, and who later died in an ambulance, is also a Colombian national.

Colombian mercenaries in Haiti

The Colombian Foreign Ministry, for its part, is still waiting for the official information on what happened, but it is not the first time that Colombian citizens have been involved in events of this nature in other countries, since Colombian mercenaries were also responsible for the assassination of the president. Haitian Jovenel Moise.

The assassination of Villavicencio, who promised to fight head-on against these gangs and who in recent weeks had denounced death threats against him, has shocked the country, in the midst of an electoral campaign that revolves almost exclusively around the crisis of security that plagues Ecuador.

Increase in murders in Ecuador

For a little over two years there has been an increase in murders at the hands of hitmen and killings by armed groups that the government links mainly to organized crime, which has gained strength in the coastal zone, where they use Ecuadorian ports as large shuttles for cocaine arriving in Europe and North America.

Villavicencio was one of the eight presidential candidates registered in these extraordinary elections, called for Sunday, August 20, after the Ecuadorian president, Guillermo Lasso, decreed the “cross death”, a constitutional mechanism with which he dissolved the National Assembly ( Parliament), with an opposition majority, when he was about to vote on his dismissal.

The armed group 'Los Lobos', active in Ecuador and linked to the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, has released a video to deny that alleged members of the organization claim responsibility for the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, which fuels doubts about the intellectual authorship of a crime for which six people have already been arrested.

The first video, broadcast on social networks, shows a group of people with their faces covered and claims the shooting attack against Villavicencio, even warning of new actions against “corrupt politicians”.. This message identifies candidate Jan Topic of the Christian Social Party as “next.”

However, a second video in which more than a dozen men dressed in white appear ask the population “not to be fooled”. “We clarify and reject the assassination of the candidate for the Presidency, Mr. Fernando Villavicencio. And we make it clear that we have never murdered people from the government or civilians,” explains one of them.

The President of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, has decreed a state of emergency for this crime, which has put the country in mourning just over a week before presidential and parliamentary elections are held.. Said process continues and Villavicencio's party, the Construye Movement, must now clarify if it names a substitute for the candidacy.

A group of three immigrants of North African origin managed to reach the coast of Melilla on a jet ski this Thursday afternoon from the nearby Moroccan waters and, after fleeing on foot as soon as they reached the shore, they have been located by security agents. the civil Guard.

As reported to Europa Press by a spokesperson for the Government Delegation, the events occurred around 5:20 p.m. when the Civil Guard observed a group of jet skis, coming from Morocco, heading towards Horcas Coloradas.

“Despite the fact that the members of the underwater activities team have been activated, three migrants have accessed land,” said the aforementioned source.. In addition, he added, one of the motorcycles has been stranded on the shore.

However, Civil Guard ground patrols “have intercepted them”, specifically “they are three adult males of Moroccan origin.”

The Belgian airport of Charleroi has reported this Thursday that a total of 88 Ryanair flights, including 22 that had Spain as their origin or destination, which were scheduled for August 14 and 15, in the middle of the bridge, are canceled due to a pilot strike in the country.

Travelers who planned to travel this bridge between Barcelona and Brussels will be the most affected in Spain, since a total of six flights between both airports have been canceled for these dates. It is followed by connections with Palma de Mallorca, which amount to four cancellations.

Similarly, other passengers who had tickets for this Ryanair route for the connection between Charleroi airport and Alicante, Asturias, Santander, Malaga or Castellón will also be affected by cancellations.

Internationally, connections with Poland, Portugal, France or Italy are also subject to cancellations, so passengers have been asked not to go to the airport.