QUITO: An Ecuadoran judge was fatally shot during a state of emergency that had been declared to combat organised crime, Ecuador’s judicial oversight body said.

It called the killing of Lady Pachar a “serious attack against justice and the rule of law in Ecuador” in a statement released Monday. Pachar was shot that day while traveling by car to a gym in the southwestern city of Machala.

Her two bodyguards were not with her when the incident took place, according to police in Machala, which is the capital of El Oro province bordering Peru.

A police source said on Tuesday that the judge had received threats and was killed in retaliation for the release of gang members. Around 70 percent of the drugs produced by Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest and second-largest cocaine producers, respectively, are shipped through Ecuador. President Daniel Noboa, one of US leader Donald Trump’s staunchest allies on the continent, has prioritized targeting cocaine traffickers since he came to power in 2023.

He has deployed soldiers on the streets and in prisons, launched dramatic raids on drug strongholds, and declared frequent states of emergency — measures fiercely criticized by human rights groups. Despite his hard-line policies, however, homicides have only increased, ticking up to a record 9,216 violent deaths last year.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2026