Sixteen air force personnel who apprehended boys being held in custody as inquiry into deaths continues. Ecuador’s attorney general’s office has confirmed that incinerated bodies found on Christmas Eve belong to the four children missing since early December, in a case posing a severe challenge to President Daniel Noboa’s “war on drugs”.
The four boys – all black, aged between 11 and 15, and residents of Las Malvinas, a poor area in the country’s largest city, Guayaquil – were returning from a football game on 8 December when they were apprehended by 16 air force soldiers. They have become known as the “Guayaquil Four”.
The bodies were found on Christmas Eve in the Taura region, where the military allegedly released them near an air force base. DNA testing was required to identify the bodies. On Tuesday the attorney general’s office informed the families that the bodies belonged to the boys and later posted on social media: “The results of the forensic genetic tests confirm that the four bodies found in Taura correspond to the three teenagers and one child who went missing after a military operation on 8 December.”.
Antonio Arroyo, the uncle of two of the boys (who were brothers), received the news in tears. “They’re the children, the children are dead. My nephews are dead,” he said, according to Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo. The families were informed after a hearing in which a judge ordered that the 16 air force personnel involved in the operation be held in custody while the investigation continues.
