Crippled and charred corpses, scenes of extreme “bestiality”: new clashes between gangs of detainees have claimed the lives of at least 68 inmates at Guayaquil Prison in Ecuador, where the government, despite its many announcements, seems to be system of penitentiaries that the country has been facing for months.
With knives, firearms and explosives, clashes between prisoners began Friday night in the second wing of the large penitentiary in Guayaquil, the largest city in the southwestern part of the country.
“According to preliminary data, about 68 people deprived of their liberty (including prisoners) were killed and another 25 were injured,” the attorney general’s office said, adding that it was conducting an investigation.
Earlier, giving an initial report, Ecuadorian police chief Tania Varela said 58 people had been killed, while police said they had “regained control” of the area where the massacre took place.
The incidents, which were marked by “more violence than usual”, were due to “a dispute over control of areas between gangs of thugs inside the prison”, the police director explained.
Blood on the walls
Η επέμβαση των δυνάμεων επιβολής της τάξης «έσωσε ζωές», διαβεβαίωσε από την πλευρά του ο Πάμπλο Αροσεμένα, ο κυβερνήτης της επαρχίας Γουάγιας, πρωτεύουσα της οποίας είναι η Γουαγιακίλ.
The governor stigmatized the “level of bestiality” of attackers who “wanted to enter the second wing”.
On Saturday morning, the body of a detainee was hanging from the roof of the building, with its white walls marked by splashes of dried blood, before being removed by police officers with covered faces, a photojournalist of the French Agency found.
Footage uploaded to social media sites, the authenticity of which has not been confirmed by an independent source, shows detainees overnight in the inner courtyard of the prison, as they beat batons thrown on top of each other, lifeless, as they begin to be consumed. fire.
“We were locked in our wing. “They want to kill us all,” said a winged inmate begging for help in another video. “Please share this video. Please, help us! “, Adds the prisoner, as successive explosions are heard in the background.
Through Twitter, President Guillermo Lasso expressed “my sincere condolences to the families who lost loved ones.”
On September 28, 119 prisoners were killed under similar conditions in the same prison, No. 1 in Wales. It was the worst prison massacre in Ecuadorian history and one of the worst in Latin American history.
Some inmates were dismembered, beheaded or burned in the incidents, attributed to drug-linked gangs and dreaded Mexican cartels.
Following the massacre, which highlighted the dramatic worsening of the country’s long-running crisis in the country’s prison system, President Lasso declared a “state of emergency” in 65 Ecuadorian prisons, deploying reinforcements, including army units.
The prisons have a nominal capacity of around 30,000 places, but they currently house some 39,000 prisoners, in other words the surplus prisoner population is around 30%. Weapons of all kinds, drugs, cell phones are circulating in large numbers in prisons. Many have been turned into theaters for gang-related clashes involving the Mexican Sinaloa cartel and Jalisco Youth.
Between Colombia and Peru, the two countries that produce the largest quantities of cocaine in the world, Ecuador has become a drug trafficking platform due to its porous borders, its dollarized economy and its major export ports, especially Wales. economic capital of the country.
“They are human beings”
In the large prison on the outskirts of the city, where 8,500 inmates are being held, or in other words the surplus population reaches 60%, according to official data, the violence has never really stopped, despite the incessant announcements of President Lasso’s government about combating insecurity.
After the September massacre, another fifteen prisoners were killed in various “incidents”, according to the authorities.
With Friday’s massacre, deaths in riots inside Ecuadorian prisons have risen to at least 308 since the beginning of the year. In February, 79 detainees were killed in simultaneous violent incidents at four penitentiaries.
Early Saturday morning, just like in late September, dozens of families of detainees gathered in front of Guayaquil Jail to ask for news of their loved ones or to cry out in despair when they learned that their relatives had been killed.
“They are human beings, help them,” read one of the banners held by some families, under the watchful eye of a powerful police and military force that even had a chariot.
Amid tears, Berta Yago, a 51-year-old aunt of an inmate who was injured in the leg by a machete in the episodes, sniffed: “I would like someone to help me get him out of there before he’s dead.”
One of the detainees, who was released on Saturday morning after serving an 18-month sentence, hugged his mother crying: “We lived in dangerous hours in this prison (…) It is raining bullets day and night.”
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