An Irish man who was arrested earlier this month with his son in Ecuador, allegedly in possession of a large amount of cocaine, has died in prison.
The man, believed to have been in his early 60s, was arrested in Guayaquil Airport.
Local police alleged he and his son were on their way to Madrid with 15 blocks of cocaine.
The man’s son is still in prison in the South American country, through which a large amount of the world’s cocaine travels on its way from Peru and Colombia to Europe, the US and elsewhere.
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The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was aware of the case and was providing consular assistance.
It is believed the man died of natural causes, but this could not be confirmed.
In social media posts after the arrests on August 2nd, Ecuadorean police posted images of the two men in which their faces were obscured. There were pictures of two handguns and the blocks of cocaine.
The men, who were not identified but described as foreigners, were alleged to have been caught in possession of 15 blocks of cocaine, hidden in two suitcases, along with ammunition and two handguns.
The drugs were estimated by the police to have a street value in Europe of about €600,000 and be the equivalent of 140,000 “doses”.
Police also seized digital weighing scales, a banknote counter and electronic devices, they said on social media at the time.
Ecuador has experienced a significant growth in gang- and drug-related crime in recent years and has struggled to accommodate the rise in the number of inmates in its prisons.
A report last year by Amnesty International said an estimated 600 people had by then died in prisons in Ecuador in the period from 2019.
In addition, Amnesty had been told that health services inside the prisons have in practice been non-functional since at least 2022, the report said.
