The Montecristi radar.
Ten Ecuadorian soldiers will go to trial accused of sabotaging the radar for “narco-planets” of the Spanish company Indra that had been installed on the coast of Ecuador under the custody of the Armed Forces and which was left inoperative after an explosion that occurred 11 days after its installation. in operation in 2021.
The judge who held the preparatory hearing for the trial validated the accusation against ten of the fourteen soldiers against whom the Prosecutor’s Office had brought charges, as indicated this Friday by the Public Ministry through its official channels.
The ten soldiers will be tried for having allegedly committed the crime of sabotage in the degree of omission, punishable by a sentence of up to ten years in prison if they destroy infrastructure in strategic sectors.
The radar went into operation on October 27, 2021 and exploded eleven days later, in the early hours of November 7, in an explosion that was heard in nearby towns.
The remains of the radar were later transferred to the Latacunga air base, in the Andean province of Cotopaxi, to be analyzed by Indra.
The radar could cover a range of 220 miles around and was installed on the top of Montecristi Hill, 600 meters above sea level, where a military camp had been built to guard it.
With this tool, the Government of the then conservative president Guillermo Lasso (2021-2023) hoped to detect the ‘narcoplanes’ that land on the plains of the Ecuadorian coastal region to load considerable quantities of cocaine. EFE