President of Ecuador says he himself will take control of the prison crisis

The president of Ecuador, Guillermo LassoHe affirmed on Monday that he will personally assume the national coordination of the forces of order and that he will make citizen security the top priority of his office to confront mafias with sufficient economic power that rivals the state budget.

In a chain disseminated by social networks, the president said that “today we act, today we make the authority of our laws and institutions feel”, and said that during the day he ordered a massive and joint operation between the armed forces and the police with more than 1,000 troops to assume “absolute control of the prison system in Guayaquil.”

He specified that it is not about confronting common crime, but rather large organizations with modern infrastructures “sophisticated weapons, complex technological platforms, and backed by an economic muscle that rivals the security budgets of many states.”

“The violent will not be able against our united action, our total determination to end their days of impunity,” Lasso said, while announcing new legal tools for the progressive use of police force and to hold the heads of the police accountable. mafias for the crimes committed by their henchmen.

He added that the fight against drug trafficking will have the support of countries such as the United States, Israel, Colombia, the United Kingdom, and Spain, which “have communicated their firm will to support us in the fight against this threat. The same will be done by supranational bodies such as the United Nations and the European Union ”.

Hours before, the president ordered a series of measures to face the successive massacres in Ecuadorian state prisons, after a meeting with the presidents of the Assembly, the Judiciary, the Attorney General’s Office, the Constitutional Court, among others, and after the last confrontation between rival gangs that left 68 dead and 25 wounded over the weekend in the Litoral Penitentiary, in the coastal city of Guayaquil.

Ecuador is “under a serious external threat, due to the attack of the drug trafficking mafias, the same ones that intend to take control of the detention centers and take away our tranquility in the streets and cities,” Lasso warned in the afternoon.

He stressed that it is essential to face together a global problem, which he also described as “one of the greatest crises in recent decades in Ecuador.”

He specified that decisions were adopted such as starting the process of pacification within the prisons through dialogue, with respect for human rights and with the support of civil society and international organizations; send a citizen defense bill to the Assembly and streamline the processes for an effective processing of the requested prison benefits.

In addition, it ordered the armed forces and police to maintain order and security within and outside the prison system indefinitely; promote dialogue tables between the State and citizens with the aim of accompanying a process of comprehensive reparation to affected families and granting pardons to inmates with serious illnesses.

So far this year, more than 324 inmates have lost their lives in clashes in state prisons across the country. The authorities have indicated that inmates have access to weapons and ammunition mainly through vehicles that enter with supplies and through deliveries with drones.

The analyst and professor at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, Fredy Rivera, told The Associated Press that “there is an improvisation in the prison care service … that has given rise to the full power of organized crime in this country, which has controls not only in prisons but also in the justice system, which is the worst ”.

He added that the prisons are under the control of organized crime and not the state. “There is a total absence of the State, due to its own fault … this is something that has already been noticed,” he added.

Lasso came to power at the end of May and in September faced the massacre of 119 prisoners in the Litoral Penitentiary, occupied by members of at least six gangs related to drug trafficking at the national and international level. That compound was built for 5,000 prisoners, but is occupied by more than 8,500.