The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, released this Saturday the first prison images of José Serrano, former Minister of the Interior during the socialist government of Rafael Correa, who was deported from the United States and is now held in the maximum-security prison El Encuentro while the case investigating him as an alleged mastermind behind the assassination of former presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio progresses.
Serrano arrived in Ecuador on the night of Friday, August 28, after landing shortly after 11:00 PM at José Joaquín de Olmedo airport in Guayaquil. Hours later, under a heavy police operation, he was transferred to the prison located in Santa Elena, where the former correísta vice president Jorge Glas is also detained.
Noboa publicly confirmed the former official's entry into prison with a photograph showing Serrano inside a cell dressed in the orange uniform of the penitentiary system. The president accompanied the post with a single word: “Done”.
Previously, the Ecuadorian president had celebrated the transfer with a message directed directly at correísmo. “We said it, we did it. José Serrano, Correa's Minister of the Interior, a new guest at El Encuentro. It's your turn next”, wrote Noboa, in an explicit reference to former president Rafael Correa.
The Minister of the Interior, John Reimberg, also highlighted the detention and assured that someone who was considered “untouchable” ended up confined in El Encuentro, while emphasizing that no one is above the law in Ecuador.
