QUITO (Reuters) -Ecuador has arrested the leader of one of the country’s biggest drug trafficking gangs, Los Lobos, in an operation with Spanish police, President Daniel Noboa said on Sunday.

Wilmer Geovanny Chavarria Barre, known as “Pipo,” helms a powerful group that the U.S. in September designated a foreign terrorist organization, along with its rival, Los Choneros.

Noboa said Chavarria had controlled illegal mining operations and drug routes with Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and had faked his death, changed his identity and hidden in Europe while ordering murders in Ecuador.

“Some gave him up for dead; we searched for him in his very own hell,” Noboa said in a social media post, thanking the Spanish police for collaborating on a capture that Ecuador’s police chief said t

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