Ecuador | Death toll from prison riot rises to 68

(Guayaquil) Mutilated and burned bodies, scenes of great “savagery” … new clashes in prison between gangs of inmates have left 68 dead in Ecuador, where the government, despite its multiple announcements, seems powerless to contain the extremely serious prison crisis that the country has known for months.

With bladed weapons, firearms and explosives, this violence between inmates began Friday evening in block 2 of the large penitentiary center in Guayaquil, the main city in the southwest of the country.

“According to preliminary information, nearly 68 people deprived of their liberty [détenus] were killed and 25 others injured, ”said the Attorney General’s office, which announced the opening of an investigation.

In a first assessment, the chief of police, Tannya Varela, had reported 58 dead, and affirmed that the police “had already taken control” of block 2.

These events, marked “by greater violence than usual”, are “the result of a territorial dispute between criminal gangs inside the penitentiary”, explained the boss of the police.

Bloody walls

The intervention of the police “saved lives”, assured Pablo Arosemena, governor of the province of Guayas (whose capital is Guayaquil).

The governor blasted “the level of savagery” of the attackers “who wanted to enter block 2”.

Saturday morning, the corpse of a detainee lay on the roof of the building, with white walls stained with icy traces of blood, shortly before being evacuated by hooded police, noted an AFP photographer.

Images broadcast on the networks, the authenticity of which has not been confirmed from an independent source, showed inmates, in the middle of the night in a courtyard inside the prison, beating sticks on a pile of bodies piled up, inanimate and in the process of being consumed in flames.

“We are locked in our pavilion. They want to kill us all ”, called for help, in another video, a prisoner of the attacked block. “Please share this video. Please help us! », Implored this inmate, with repeated detonations in the background.

In a tweet, President Guillermo Lasso “offered my sincere condolences to the families who have lost loved ones”.

On September 28, 119 people died in the same circumstances in this same prison of Guayas 1, the largest massacre in Ecuador’s prison history and one of the worst in Latin America.

Some detainees had been dismembered, beheaded, or burned in this violence between gangs linked to drug trafficking and Mexican cartels.

After the massacre, a dramatic worsening of the country’s long prison crisis, President Lasso proclaimed a “state of emergency” in the 65 Ecuadorian prisons, notably with the deployment of significant military reinforcements.

These prisons can accommodate 30,000 people but are occupied by 39,000 inmates, an overcrowding of 30%. Weapons of all kinds, drugs and cell phones circulate there in large numbers. They are the scene of a bloody rivalry between in particular the formidable Mexican cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generacion.

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 crime related to trafficking in drugs, in particular in Guayaquil, a port city and economic center of the country.

“They are human beings”

In the huge prison on the outskirts of the city, which houses 8,500 inmates and whose overcrowding reaches 60% here according to official figures, the violence has not stopped since, despite the multiple announcements and the incessant communication from the government on this subject. the fight against insecurity.

After the September incidents, 15 other detainees were killed in different incidents. With another Friday night massacre, riots in Ecuadorian prisons have left more than 308 dead since the start of the year. In February, 79 inmates died in simultaneous riots in four prisons.

On Saturday morning, as was the case during the September 28 massacre, dozens of families of detainees gathered in front of the Guayaquil penitentiary, trying to hear from their loved ones or shouting in despair at the news of the death. one of theirs.

“They are human beings, help them”, could be read on a banner carried by these families, contained by a deployment of police and soldiers supported by a tank.

Between sobs, Berta Yago, 51, and aunt of a detainee injured in the violence by a machete in the leg, lamented: “I would like someone to help me get him out before we do not take it out dead ”.

A prisoner, released Saturday morning after an 18-month sentence, embraced his mother in tears: “We are living in critical times in this prison, […] bullets rain day and night ”.