More than 100 prisoners remain at large after riot in Ecuador prison

More than a hundred inmates remain fugitives after a riot in a prison in Ecuadorin which 43 inmates died, reported this Monday Fausto Salinas, general commander of the Police.

Which “they are not in the center, there are 108 people”, Salinas said at a press conference in which a balance of the prison massacre that occurred in the Bellavista prison, in the city of Santo Domingo. So far, 112 prisoners have been recaptured, Interior Minister Patricio Castillo said at the same press conference.

LOOK: More than 500 detainees in the first seven days of the state of emergency in Ecuador

EXTREME CRUELTY

As soon as the facts were known, images began to circulate that reveal the extreme cruelty of the night lived in this prison, where a pile of half-naked bodies can be seen, some of them mutilated and without heads, lying on puddles and trails of blood in all the addresses.

In this new riot, which began around 1:30 local time (6:30 GMT), at least 220 prisoners escaped from the pavilions either to save their lives or regain their freedom, and so far they have only managed be recaptured by the security forces 112, so 108 are still at large.

This latest massacre occurred with the president, Guillermo Lasso, outside the country, on the first day of his official visit to Israel, where precisely one of his objectives is to obtain even more support and cooperation from the Israeli government in security matters to confront to the violence of criminal organizations.

It was also the first major crisis to be faced by the new military and police leadership appointed by Lasso last week and coincided with the official presentation of the new head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces, scheduled for this Monday.

THREE PROVINCES IN A STATE OF EXCEPTION

The criminal gangs to which these massacres inside the prisons are attributed are also allegedly the cause of the growing violence that exists on the coast of Ecuador due to the control of drug trafficking and the export of mainly cocaine to the United States and Europe.

After scenes of terror such as the appearance of various decapitated bodies and the increasingly evident and frequent activity of hitmen, the Government decreed a state of emergency for a week and a half in the coastal provinces of Guayas, Manabí and Esmeraldas, bordering Colombia .

Recently, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a report on the prison crisis in Ecuador in which it urged the Government to regain internal control of the prisons, provide decent conditions for prisoners and develop crime prevention policies where do not prioritize incarceration.

Until the end of 2021 there were more than 36,000 inmates, almost 40% without a sentence, in 36 centers with a capacity of 30,000 inmates, although overcrowding reached 62% in prisons such as Guayaquil, the most populous in the country with 7,231 prisoners. freedom and scene of the bloodiest episodes experienced last year.

To solve the prison crisis, the Government of Ecuador is in the process of hiring 1,400 new prison officers, granting around 5,000 pardons to prisoners convicted of minor crimes and developing the country’s first human rights policy towards the prison population.

Source: AFP and EFE

Source: Elcomercio

Deshawn