Objective “total massacre”: bloodbath in the largest prison in Ecuador, at least 68 dead – South West

Between Friday and Saturday, violence gripped the Guayaquil penitentiary in southwest Ecuador. Mutilated and burned bodies, scenes of great “savagery”, “barbarism” … Using bladed weapons, firearms and explosives, the clashes began Friday evening in block 2 of this vast penitentiary center , the largest in the country. The official death toll on Saturday at midday was 68 inmates killed and 25 wounded.

Saturday evening, while the police had nevertheless assured to have entered the same morning in this block 2, the spokesman of the presidency Carlos Jijon admitted that “new incidents were occurring inside the penitentiary”, with “attacks from one district to another ”. The same spokesperson said shortly afterwards that the police were inside the establishment and that the situation there was “under control”. Nearly 900 police officers were deployed to deal with the incidents, including 500 inside the prison complex.

“Lobos” and “Latin King”

President Guillermo Lasso “holds a meeting with the high command of the armed forces and the police, a crisis cabinet has been set up”, according to Carlos Jijon. The Head of State “invited representatives of civil society to start organizing a dialogue inside the prison in order to put an end to the barbarism taking place there”, according to the presidential spokesman. Started in block 2, the violence has spread to other cell blocks, where criminal gangs (“Tiguerones”, “Lobos” and other “Latin King”) linked to drug trafficking are reigning terror.

On Friday evening, the facility’s electricity was sabotaged to facilitate the night attack. According to the governor of the province of Guayas (of which Guayaquil is the capital), Pablo Arosemena, “the exchanges of fire were very intense, very close to the entrance doors of the penitentiary, with detonations”. The attackers “tried to besiege, to corner” the detainees of block 2. The leader of this block, known as the leader of the “Tiguerones”, was released last Wednesday after serving 60% of his sentence.

“As this cell block (with some 700 prisoners) is now without a leader, other blocks, along with other gangs, have tried to break them down, enter and carry out a total massacre there”, explained the governor, denouncing the “savagery” of the attackers, who used explosives to pierce the walls. According to the Chief of Police, General Tannya Varela, there is a “vacuum” in the prison due to the absence of leaders in several wings, which has triggered a “struggle for leadership”. This new massacre “could possibly lead to other actions”, she warned.

Bloody walls

On Saturday morning, the corpse of an inmate lay on the roof of the building, with white walls stained with freezing traces of blood. Unbearable images broadcast overnight Friday to Saturday on social media showed inmates in a prison yard, beating sticks at a pile of piled up bodies and burning in flames. In a tweet, President Guillermo Lasso offered his “sincere condolences to the families who have lost loved ones” and called for the establishment of “appropriate institutional tools” to deal with this new prison crisis.

On September 28, 119 people died in the same circumstances in this same Guayas 1 prison, in the largest massacre in Ecuador’s prison history and one of the worst in Latin America. Some detainees had been dismembered, beheaded, or burned. President Lasso then proclaimed a “state of emergency” in the 65 Ecuadorian prisons, promising the deployment of significant military reinforcements.

Controversy

On Saturday, the president criticized this high legal body, seeing in this new bloodbath a “red flag for the institutions of the Ecuadorian state, in particular the Constitutional Court”. The 65 Ecuadorian prisons can accommodate 30,000 people but are occupied by 39,000 detainees, an overcrowding of 30%. Weapons of all kinds, drugs and cell phones circulate there in large numbers.

Located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s main producers of cocaine, and used as a transit zone for shipping to the United States and Europe, Ecuador faces an increase in drug-related crime. , in particular in Guayaquil, port city and economic center of the country.