After being convicted guilty of the forcible disappearance of four boys last year, eleven Ecuadorian soldiers received sentences totaling 34 years in prison. The violent country was startled to learn that the four boys, ages 11 to 15, had been assaulted and burned to death.
A military patrol took up the lads on their way back from playing football in Guayaquil, the court found, and they were beaten, stripped of their clothes, and left naked in a hazardous, deserted area. When one of the lads called his father, they had already left by the time he got there. Days later, their charred remains were discovered on a military installation close to Guayaquil. The disappearance of 15-year-old Nehemías Arboleda, 11-year-old Steven Medina, and brothers Ismael, 15, and Josús Arroyo, 14, put 17 soldiers on trial.
Five troops received reduced sentences of two and a half years for cooperating with the prosecution, while eleven soldiers received terms of 34 years and eight months in jail. It was decided that a lieutenant-colonel who had not been on patrol with the group was innocent.
As part of the government’s campaign against criminal gangs in the nation, which has seen a sharp increase in crime due to the gangs’ growing influence, the soldiers were deployed on patrol.
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