QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — A court in Ecuador handed lengthy prison sentences Monday to a group of eleven soldiers who were responsible for the abduction and torture of four children last year — a case that has rattled the South American nation and raised questions about President Daniel Noboa’s efforts to militarize some cities amid a surge in drug-related violence.
The court sentenced the soldiers to 34 years in prison for the “forced disappearance” of the children, and said the defendants would have to pay $10,000 fines to the families of the victims and ask for forgiveness in public.
The soldiers convicted on Monday are expected to face a murder trial for the deaths of the children next year. The remains of the children — aged 11 to 15 — were found in December 2024, a few weeks after they were reported missing.
Ecuador’s military has been patrolling the streets of some cities since January 2024, when Noboa issued a decree saying his country was in an "internal armed conflict.
The conservative president, who was reelected to a four-year term in April, has argued that the measure is necessary to reduce violence in Ecuador, whose homicide rate has tripled since 2021, as drug gangs fight over the control of ports and cocaine smuggling routes.
But human rights groups have accused the military and police of committing abuses against civilians that include extra judicial killings and the arrest of thousands of people without due process.
On Dec. 8, 2024 brothers Ismael and Josué Arroyo along with their friends Saúl Arboleda and Steven Medina were reported as missing after they did not return home from a soccer game in the port city of Guayaquil.
Security camera footage obtained by local journalists a few days later, showed that the children had been detained by a military patrol and were forced into the back of a pickup truck.
Later that month the remains of the children’s charred bodies were found by investigators outside a military base on the outskirts of Guayaquil, and a judge ordered the detention of several soldiers who had become suspects in the crime.
The military acknowledged that the children had been in its custody and had been taken by the patrol following reports of a robbery. But it initially blamed drug gangs in Guayaquil for the killings, arguing that the children had been murdered after soldiers released them.
In Monday’s ruling, Judge José Suárez determined that the children were killed by soldiers who failed to communicate their detention to their superiors or report their arrest to the police.
The judge said that the children were “executed in a cruel fashion” after they were forced to move a fallen tree in a wooded area near a military base. There, he said, they were beaten with rifles and ordered to strip before being killed.
Around 100 witnesses participated in the trial against the soldiers, with investigators also using the children’s remains to prove that they had been beaten in the head before they were executed.
A group of five soldiers who collaborated with investigators were handed reduced sentences of 2 1/2 years on Monday.
The court also said Ecuador’s military must conduct a ceremony to “recognize the responsibility of the State and the military” in the crime and install a plaque honoring the children at the military base where the convicted soldiers were stationed.
Ecuador's Defense Ministry said Monday in a statement it would comply with Monday's ruling.
“Justice has been delivered today,” the statement read. “We ratify our respect for the law and the sentence that has been handed.”
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