High Court orders military to accept responsibility for the kidnapping and deaths of the ‘Malvinas 4’

The Constitutional Court on Tuesday ordered Ecuador’s military to accept responsibility for the kidnapping, torture  and murder of four Guayaquil teenagers in December 2024 and criticized a lower court for withholding evidence in the case prior to the 2025 trial.

Relatives and human rights organizations held a vigil in memory of the ‘Malvinas 4’ on the first anniversary of their disappearance and murder in December 2025.

The four boys, Ismael and Josué Arroyo, 15 and 14, Nehemías Arboleda, 15 and Steven Medina 11, were picked up by a military patrol near their homes on December 8, 2024. Their bodies were discovered two weeks later, northwest of Guayaquil.

A year later, eleven soldiers were convicted of kidnapping and torture and sentenced to 34 years in prison. Police say an investigation into the murders is continuing.

The news media code-named the case “The Malvinas 4.”

The high court ordered the commander of the Ecuadorian Air Force (FAE), Gian Carlo Loffredo, to offer a public apology and recognize the responsibility of the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces in the case. The judges claimed that a January 2025 apology by Loffredo, in which he defended the military, “completely distorted the nature of the crime and constituted a re-victimization of the victims and their relatives.”

In its ruling, the court said it “recognized that what happened to Josué, Ismael, Steven and Nehemiah constitutes one of the most serious and reprehensible violations of the constitutional and international order of human rights in Ecuador history and is incompatible with the principles of the constitutional rule of law and with a democratic coexistence based on respect for human dignity.”

In their argument before the court, attorneys for the victims’ families claimed that national and military officials refused to accept “full responsibility” for the kidnapping, torture and murders of the boys. “What happened to these children was the result of a careless and unregulated culture in the Ecuadorian military and this has never been acknowledged,” one of the attorneys said.

In addition of its criticism of the armed forces, the court claimed that the lower court which handled the case acted inappropriately in allowing information and evidence about the crime to be withheld. Attorneys for the military command had argued that release of the information could “negatively affect national security.”

In addition to ordering Loffredo’s apology, the court ordered financial compensation for the victims’ families and listed a number of measures to memorialize the victims and acknowledge crime.

• The incorporation of the case in the National Museum of Memory in Quito
• The addition of a public space for children and adolescents in Guayaquil
• The declaration of a national day of remembrance in memory of the four children.
• The National Assembly should declare December 8 as a day of commemoration in memory of the four children by resolution.
• The Ministry of Public Health must provide free and adequate psychological, psychiatric, and medical care to the relatives (parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, and cousins) of the victims.
• The Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defense must draw up regulations that regulate the subordination of the Armed Forces to the National Police in apprehensions, with specific protocols for minors.
• The Attorney General’s Office should update its investigation protocols for cases of disappeared persons and incorporate specific procedures for forced disappearances.

Although the court said the convictions of the 11 soldiers did not include murder charges, their actions led ultimately to the boys’ deaths.