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A court in Ecuador has sentenced multiple soldiers to decades in prison over the forced disappearance and abuse of four children detained during a military security operation.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: Back in December of 2024, a military patrol operating in the city of Guayaquil detained four Afro-Ecuadorian boys named Steven Medina, Nehemías Arboleda, and brothers Ismael and Josué Arroyo, aged between 11 and 15, while carrying out security operations linked to the government’s crackdown on organized crime. The soldiers were deployed to the streets as part of an internal security campaign ordered by President Daniel Noboa amid soaring gang violence. Instead of taking the boys to police custody, the soldiers beat them, subjected them to racist insults and mock executions, forced them to strip naked, and transported them far from the city. The children were then abandoned in a remote, swampy rural area. Days later, their burned remains were found nearby, with forensic evidence indicating they had suffered injuries before their deaths.

What’s going on now: In a significant development, a criminal court in Guayaquil ended a weeks-long trial by finding that the soldiers were responsible for the forced disappearance of the four boys. Judges heard testimony from both prosecutors and five soldiers who chose to cooperate with authorities, who described in detail how the minors were beaten, humiliated, threatened with simulated executions, and deliberately left in an isolated and dangerous rural area. Presiding Judge Jovanny Suárez ruled that the soldiers knowingly exposed the children to extreme risk and that this decision set in motion the chain of events that led to their deaths, even though the court did not convict the defendants of homicide itself despite widespread belief that the soldiers directly killed the boys.

The court determined that 16 soldiers were directly involved in the patrol that detained the boys, with 11 found guilty of enforced disappearance and sentenced to 34 years and eight months in prison, the maximum penalty sought by prosecutors. Five other soldiers received significantly reduced sentences of roughly two years after providing key testimony that corroborated the prosecution’s case, while a lieutenant colonel accused of complicity but who was not present during the patrol was acquitted. Evidence presented at trial included forensic reports, witness accounts, and video and audio material demonstrating abuse, racist language, and a subsequent “pact of silence,” in which the soldiers failed to report the detention and falsely told their superiors that nothing unusual had occurred during the operation.

Following the ruling, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense said it respected the court’s decision and would provide court-ordered reparations to the victims’ families. At the same time, defense lawyers for the convicted soldiers announced plans to appeal the first-instance verdict, arguing that the evidence was insufficient and that the patrol lacked proper training for civilian security duties.