Ecuador: a riot between rival gangs in a prison kills 116 – archyworldys

According to the latest report, 116 prisoners died and 80 were injured in the clashes that took place Tuesday at the Penitenciaria del Litoral. Ecuador’s largest detention center is located in Guayaquil, a port city and commercial hub. Six of the deceased were beheaded, according to the prosecutor’s office.

The clashes began around 9 a.m. with a shootout, when inmates from Pavilions 8 and 9, reserved for the Los Lobos and Tiguerones gangs, tried to enter Pavilions 10 and 12, the neighborhood of the Chone Killer gang members. According to the brother of a prisoner who received several videos, “those of 12 found a drone with a grenade, which fortunately did not explode, and they say they saw the drone from Pavilion 8 leave. at that time they were on the roof ”. They fiercely retorted.

Residents around heard detonations and explosions. Traders lowered the curtain as police warned of the risk of stray bullets that could come from the prison.

Roads were cut to allow special units to get there, and ambulances to arrive. The injured were not taken care of until a semblance of calm had returned, in the middle of the afternoon. A group of cooks had been evacuated before the tactical units entered the compound. In Pavilion No. 5, they found the bodies of 19 inmates riddled with bullets, stab wounds and large impacts and 48 injured. Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso admitted at a press conference on Wednesday evening that the situation was not completely under control, and that police were still unable to enter several lodges. The balance sheet could therefore grow heavier.

A quarter of Ecuador’s prison population

In the meantime, dozens of people have converged on the prison to obtain information about their relatives and to hold prisoner security officials to account. They told local media that they had received videos of the clashes on their phones.

Mothers, wives and sisters of detainees came in large numbers to the news on Tuesday. REUTERS / Vicente Gaibor del Pino

The government has strengthened the military presence outside the facility, with mounted police and military still guarding the exterior of the complex. The president assured that the state would help the families of dead or injured detainees by setting up a psychological support unit. He also promised to accelerate the allocation of the budget envelope of 24 million dollars (20.7 million euros) planned to strengthen the security arrangements of the prison, which houses nearly 10,000 inmates, i.e. a quarter of Ecuador’s prison population.

President Lasso also “declared a state of emergency throughout the prison system at the national level”, while Ecuadorian prisons have for months been the scene of recurrent violence between criminal groups linked to drug trafficking. “In Guayaquil, I will chair the crisis committee responsible for coordinating the actions necessary to control the emergency, guaranteeing the human rights of all those involved,” he said. The state of emergency is a notch above the state of emergency, decreed in July after the death of some 20 detainees.

Located between Colombia and Peru, the main producers of cocaine in the world, Ecuador is suffering the merciless struggle waged in Mexico by the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartels. Two of the Ecuadorian gangs that support these cartels have nearly 20,000 members in the country, police estimate.

Border closures because of the Covid would have greatly strained the cocaine market, leading to an upsurge in violence for the territories and the axes of transport of the goods. Since the beginning of the year, more than 160 prisoners have killed each other, according to the National Service for Comprehensive Attention to Adults Deprived of Liberty and Teenage Delinquents (SNAI). The most serious case took place in February, simultaneously in four prisons, where 80 deaths were counted. On September 13, three explosions occurred in another prison in the province of Guayas, caused by drones from outside, which testifies, if necessary, of the porosity between the interior and the outside.

Eight days ago, during a search of the Guayaquil prison, the police had nevertheless got hold of 350 ammunition of different calibers, three firearms, a grenade, twelve sticks of dynamite, homemade bombs, 27 knives. and 16 cell phones. The arsenal was therefore well hidden, or was quickly reconstituted.

A quarter of Ecuador’s prison population

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