GUAYAQUIL: Ecuador transferred a powerful gang leader, accused of threatening a presidentialcandidate before he was slain, to a maximum security prison via a massive military and police operation on Saturday.

At dawn, around 4,000 heavily armed agents entered a prison in Guayaquil, south-western Ecuador, where Jose Adolfo Macias, the head of a powerful gang, has been held since 2011.

Images shared by security forces showed a bearded man, with his hands on his head, in some shots and lying on the floor with his arms tied in others.

On Saturday, Villavicencio`s party announced that his running mate, Christian Zurita, would take his place inthe Aug 20 election.

Ecuadoran President Guillermo Lasso announced on social media site X that Macias had been transferred to La Roca, a 150-person maximum security prison that is part of the same penitentiary complex where the gang boss was already being held.

Ecuador has been under a state of emergency since the shock assassination on Wednesday of journalist-turned-politician Fernando Villavicencio.

The anti-corruption crusader up to then second in polls was gunned down as he left a campaign rally in the capital Quito.

A week before the 59-year-old was killed, he had said that macias was threatening him.-AFP