Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa has had quite a month, surviving not one, not two, but three alleged assassination attempts – the latest of which apparently involved gifts of jam and chocolate laced with poisonous chemicals.
The president made the claim to CNN’s Fernando del Rincon on Thursday, saying the gifts had contained “very high concentrations” of three chemicals, “and it was practically impossible for these to be present together at those levels” – unless the gifts had been spiked.
That comes just weeks after another alleged assassination attempt when a crowd throwing rocks surrounded Noboa’s car as he traveled to an engagement in Cañar province. Bullet marks were later found on the vehicle, according to energy minister Ines Manzano, while days earlier, according to Noboa, another crowd threw Molotov cocktails and homemade rockets at his vehicle.
While some critics are skeptical of the claims amid a lack of publicly available evidence – suggesting instead that they are meant to distract from growing public discontent and protests against Noboa’s government – the president insisted to CNN the threat was real.
“It wasn’t just sticks and stones. There were homemade rockets, Molotov cocktails, projectiles that could still kill you … and from high above, they threw rocks at the windshield and hood of the car,” Noboa said.
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