U.S. designates Chone Killers as terrorist organization 

The Ecuadorian gang the Chone Killers has been designated a foreign terrorist organization, a move that allows the U.S. to impose sanctions and pursue criminal prosecutions against anyone associated with the group. Ecuador police arrested suspected Chone Killer members near Guayaquil in February. In a statement Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the gang “has committed numerous attacks targeting civilians, law enforcement officers, and government officials, including high-profile assassinations of public officials.” The U.S. had already designated the gang’s original faction, Los Choneros, as a terrorist organization. “We have designated as terrorist organizations two groups that operate here in Ecuadorian territory. One is Los Lobos and the other is Los Choneros. We’ve designated them as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and that brings with it all sorts of options for the United States to work in conjunction with the Government of Ecuador in the future to stamp these groups out,” Rubio said. The U.S. has been working closely with Ecuador on security matters since the beginning of the year. In March, the U.S. military began conducting joint operations with Ecuador’s armed forces to target suspected narco terrorist gangs in the country, part of a broader campaign of U.S. military intervention in Latin American countries. Several news organizations, including the New York Times and The Guardian, determined that at least one of those operations resulted in the destruction of dairy farm near the Colombian border unrelated to the illegal drug trade. “The bombing raid, carried out by helicopter, was based on faulty information provided by U.S. intelligence officers,” the Times reported. “These groups are not common gangs,” Noboa claimed. “These are narco terrorist groups that attack our region, that attack our citizens, affect the country’s development, affect our ports. And a lot of it comes from our borders.” The foreign terrorist designation comes after a U.S. Justice Department announcement of the arrests of eight members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, part of what the administration has described as an ongoing crackdown on alleged gang activity since Trump returned to the White House last year. The post U.S. designates Chone Killers as terrorist organization  appeared first on CuencaHighLife.