Ecuador is freeing thousands of drug mules

In Latin America’s latest challenge to Washington’s “war on drugs,” Ecuador has quietly begun releasing thousands of convicted cocaine smugglers.

The move is a result of the country’s new criminal law, which took effect Aug. 10. It treats “drug mules” who commit the low-profit, high-risk offense more as vulnerable people exploited by cartels than as hardened criminals.

The reform retroactively applies heavily reduced jail sentences to those already convicted of attempting to transport relatively small amounts of drugs — often hidden dangerously inside their own bodies — out of the Latin American country.

Around 500 mules have already been freed and at least another 2,000 are expected to follow, says Jorge Paladines, national coordinator of the Public Defender’s Office. The sentence reduction is not automatic and can only happen after a court hearing, which the prisoner has to request.

“There is a policy of seeing mules as victims of the drug trade,” Paladines told GlobalPost. “I don’t like using the term ‘sentence reduction,’ because was their sentence fair to start with? This is really about sentence proportionality.”

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