The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, confirmed this Friday the deportation from the United States to his country of the former Minister of the Interior and former president of the National Assembly, José Serrano.
The lawyer will be admitted in the next few hours to the El Encuentro prison, located in the province of Santa Elena, after the justice system ratified the preventive detention order against him for his participation in the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in 2023.
“We said it, we fulfilled it. José Serrano, Minister of the Interior under (Rafael) Correa, new guest of El Encuentro”, said the Ecuadorian president in a message on social media, where he attached images of the former minister on a plane, escorted by ICE agents (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), heading to Ecuador.
In his post on X, Noboa also addressed former president Rafael Correa, in whose cabinet Serrano served, warning him that he will be the next to be arrested. <b“Your turn is coming soon”, he threatened.
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The former Secretary of State, who was under immigration custody in the U.S., was detained a year ago in Florida for overstaying his visa. Serrano had been in U.S. territory since 2021, until this May when a judge denied his asylum request.
The politician is one of the seven suspects investigated by the Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office for Villavicencio’s death. On August 8, prosecutor Ana Hidalgo accused them of homicide as intellectual authors, since it was carried out by hitmen.
The former candidate was murdered on August 9, 2023, as he was leaving an electoral campaign rally in Quito, the capital of Ecuador.
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