President of Ecuador appeals to constitutional measures in the face of prison crisis

The president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, regretted this Saturday the new massacre in a prison in the city of Guayaquil and urged “Suitable constitutional tools” to protect the population and restore order in the prisons, which, he said, “It is not possible if the public force cannot act.”

“This is a call for attention to the institutions of the Ecuadorian State, especially to the Constitutional Court. We need suitable constitutional tools to protect the population, restore order in prisons and fight the mafias that profit from chaos ”, Lasso wrote on his Twitter account.

The first “The right that we must guarantee is the right to life and citizen freedom, which is not possible if the public force cannot act to protect. I express my sincere condolences to the families who lost loved ones. May God bless Ecuador! ”, indicated the president on Twitter.

Lasso’s statements come shortly after the Attorney General’s Office of Ecuador confirmed the death of 68 prisoners in a new riot inside the main prison in Guayaquil (southwest), where last September the worst prison massacre in the country was recorded.

The Ecuadorian leader participates this Saturday in a meeting with the Security Committee, installed after the massacre in the Litoral Penitentiary of Guayaquil.

According to the agenda, the committee meeting was scheduled for 1.30pm local time (6.30pm GMT) at the facilities of the Integrated Security Service Ecu 911, in the coastal city of Guayaquil, reported the General Secretariat of Communication of the Presidency.

Lasso commented on Twitter that after the appointment there will be a “important announcement”.

Pablo Arosemena, governor of the province of Guayas, whose capital is Guayaquil, explained that the clashes registered between the night and the early morning of today in the Litoral penitentiary began when a group of inmates sought to corner the inmates in pavilion 2.

That pavilion was left without its leader after the Justice released him after having served 60% of his sentence.

“As this pavilion was without a ringleader, other pavilions, with other gangs, tried to subdue them, enter to carry out a total massacre,” Arosemena said at a press conference, detailing that approximately 700 people are being held in pavilion 2.

According to Arosemena, the entrance of the National Police to the pavilion in the early morning “allowed to save lives.”

The country’s prison system is under a state of exception after the worst prison massacre in the country, which occurred in September precisely in that Guayaquil prison, where 118 inmates were murdered, several of them dismembered, in the middle of a brawl between related gangs. with drug trafficking, according to the authorities.

On November 4, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador reduced to 30 days, half the expected time, and conditioned another state of exception that Lasso decreed on October 18 to stop the rise of crime in several regions.

The Constitutional Court also ruled that the mobilization of the Armed Forces, ordered in the executive decree with which the state of exception was applied, be restricted to operations in which that institution fulfills “exclusively functions complementary to those of the Police.” that it is fully justified and respects the principle of proportionality.

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