(Quito) Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso has extended the state of emergency in the country’s prisons by one month, where more than 300 inmates have died since early 2020 in gang violence.
The presidential decree, signed on Sunday, provides for the “mobilization” of the police and the army to “strengthen and restore order and control” in all the country’s prison centers.
According to the text, which extends the measure until December 29, “criminal organizations that operate inside centers for the deprivation of liberty hold sophisticated weapons and have demonstrated a high level of violence and cruelty”.
The head of state declared a state of emergency in the country’s prisons on September 29 after the death of 119 prisoners in a prison in Gayaquil (southwest), the worst massacre in a prison in Latin America. Some detainees had been dismembered, beheaded, or burned.
On November 14, 62 other inmates had died in the same prison in new violence between gangs, linked to drug trafficking.
The 65 Ecuadorian prisons suffer from 30% overcrowding. Weapons of all kinds, drugs and cell phones circulate there in large numbers.
Located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s main producers of cocaine, and used as a transit zone for shipping to the United States and Europe, Ecuador faces an increase in drug-related crime .