Ecuador: 15 injured in new episodes in prisons

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New violent incidents in which prisoners were involved in Ecuador yesterday Monday resulted in fifteen of them being injured, police said.

A “clash inside” a prison known as El Inca, north of the capital Quito, has erupted, local police chief Enrique Bautista told a local television station.

“Fifteen prisoners were injured, two of whom were taken to hospital,” but no firearms were used in the incidents, according to police chief Bautista.

“The situation has been brought under control,” the senior Ecuadorian police official said, adding that security forces had searched the detainees’ cells and confiscated 43 knives.

“The situation is under control,” the SNAI, the penitentiary service, said, referring to “incidents” caused by “certain persons deprived of their liberty”.

The incidents, which are often marked by extreme violence, are often in the prisons of Ecuador, where since February 2021 almost 350 prisoners have lost their lives.

The most recent deadly clash inside a prison was recorded earlier this month in a prison in the south: twenty detainees were killed. Some bodies were found mutilated.

According to the government of conservative President Guillermo Lasso, rival drug-trafficking gangs, which have been infiltrated or controlled by Mexican cartels, have been embroiled in a relentless war for control of prisons, where inmates are overcrowded. The authorities so far seem powerless to end this undeclared war.

Yesterday Monday, a vehicle exploded outside the large prison in the city of Guayaquil, a strategic port in the southwestern part of the country. Authorities did not comment on the casualties, nor did they say whether it was an attack.

This vast complex includes a high-security detention center, which has recently recruited people considered by authorities to be gang leaders.

In 2021, Ecuador seized a record quantity of 210 tons of drugs, mainly cocaine. So far this year, drug seizures have already reached about 70 tonnes.

Although only a transit or storage country for drugs, Ecuador, between Colombia and Peru – the world’s top two cocaine producers – has seen a sharp rise in trafficking in recent years. USA and Europe, mainly through Pacific ports, while the retail sale of cocaine in the internal market is in full swing.

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