Six people killed on Friday in a prison in Ecuador were suspects in the murder of anti-corruption presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, the prisons agency said in a statement.
The killings took place in Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil, the South American country’s largest city, the attorney general’s office said earlier on Friday.
Ecuador’s government condemned the killings.
President Guillermo Lasso pledged “neither complicity nor cover-up” in getting to the bottom of the crime, in a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Here the truth will be known,” he said.
Victims were all Colombian nationals
The SNAI prisons agency said in a statement the six men were all Colombian nationals. It gave no more details of the killings.
The government has said authorities are determined to identify those behind Villavicencio’s murder.
Villavicencio, a prominent journalist, was gunned down less than two weeks before a first round general election.
