Major Ecuadorian organized crime leader set free in Spain

On January 9, 2024, 13 armed men forcibly took over the TC Televisión station in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and took its news program crew hostage on air, as cameras rolled. Stunned, viewers sat in their homes watching the violence unroll. While pointing their guns at journalists, one of the masked assailants spoke on a cell phone. On the other end of the line, according to later reports from Ecuadorian police, was William Joffre Alcívar Bautista a.k.a. Black Willy or Commander Willy, who was running the operation from Spain. Months afterwards, a collaborative investigation led to his arrest in a house in Calafell, in northeastern Spain. On December 29, Spanish authorities released him after the expiration of the deadline for officials from the South American country to file pre-extradition safeguards.

Black Willy, the frontperson of Los Tiguerones, one of Ecuador’s most violent gangs, controls an army of hitmen dedicated to extortion, kidnapping, car bombings and dominating the drug trafficking industry across entire cities in Ecuador. The assault on TC Televisión marked a turning point in the country’s security crisis. That same day, Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, first declared that an internal armed conflict was underway in the country, turning over civil security to the military.

The criminal had fled to Spain in 2022, thanks to falsified Colombian documentation. He led a well-heeled life there, according to a report from the Spanish Civil Guard emitted after his arrest, during which his brother Alex Iván a.k.a. Ronco, who is one year younger and is a co-leader of Los Tiguerones, was also apprehended. Both have also been linked to the assassination of the Ecuadorian prosecutor charged with investigating the assault on the TV station, who was shot to death days after the announcement of his assignment.

Alcívar Bautista faced two orders of extradition in Spain, both of which were approved by Spain’s central court Audiencia Nacional, according to a ruling dated June 23, 2025 to which EL PAÍS had access. Nonetheless, the court made his extradition conditional on Ecuador providing guarantees regarding the life and integrity of the detainee. When no guarantees were received within the stipulated period, he was released on December 29, after having been imprisoned since October 2024. “The period established by law has run out,” said sources at the national court, which repeatedly offered reminders to the Ecuadorian government that it had three months to complete the process.

“The legal authority decided to set a terrorist free in Spanish territory. This should raise concerns among citizens living in Spain,” stated John Reimberg, Ecuador’s minister of the interior, who denied the Spanish court’s version of events.

Reimberg says the guarantees were sent on June 12, but that Spanish legal authorities “continued extending and extending their requests for more information. To what end?,” asked the minister, who says their goal was to release the subject in Spain.

According to Ecuador’s foreign ministry, the country has fulfilled all requirements established in the bilateral treaty of extradition signed by both nations, which allowed the extradition to be approved in May. In June 2025, Ecuador turned in new documentation requested by Spain, including the necessary safeguards for the transfer of Alcívar Bautista to Ecuador. “Despite this, Spain again requested an amplification of safeguards to execute the extradition, which had already been turned in,” the ministry said in a statement, which did not specify when the process had been completed.

The Spanish court had requested that Ecuador agree to specific measures in accordance with recommendations from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as to the protection of the right to life and integrity of prisoners. Ecuador, which has suffered more than a dozen massacres in the last five years, is facing serious problems related to overcrowding and violence in its prisons. In 2025, at least 600 prisoners died from tuberculosis, hunger or lack of medical care in Guayaquil’s Litoral prison, according to a report from the city’s human rights committee.

Reimberg says that the Ecuadorian government will do “everything necessary” for Spain to recapture Alcívar Bautista and send him back to his home country. He also denounced recent, direct threats on his life. “Yesterday I was notified by intelligence agencies that the criminal group of this delinquent wants to act against me, because it knows that I am not retreating until he pays for everything he has done,” he says.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition