Its very likely that the alleged charges against JA in the indictment were necessary for the U.S. to establish the required jurisdiction over JA in order to safely extradite him to the U.S. in compliance with the extremely antiquated extradition "EXTRADITION TREATY BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE REPUBLIC OF ECUADOR"
https://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/en/traites/en_traites-ext-usa-ecu.pdf
https://web.oas.org/mla/en/Treaties_B/USA_biltreat_ecu_eng_1.pdf