Twenty-five people were killed during a prison riot and dozens were wounded when two groups of inmates waged a gunbattle inside the penitentiary while hundreds of relatives were visiting, Venezuelan officials said on Monday.
The violence erupted at Yare I prison south of Caracas on Sunday, and at least one of those slain was a relative of an inmate, said Iris Varela, the government’s prisons minister.
It was the latest and one of the deadliest in a series of bloody clashes that have flared in Venezuela’s overcrowded prisons and become a major problem for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s government.
Photo: EPA
Varela told state television on Monday afternoon that 17 of the 25 dead had been identified so far. She said some of them had been shot in the head. Forty-three other people were wounded, including 29 inmates and 14 visiting relatives, Varela said.
About 980 women who were at the prison to see inmates when the fighting broke out were still inside, she said.
Armed inmates still held control of the prison on Monday night, and some of the relatives stayed inside due to fears about how security forces outside would react, said Humberto Prado, an activist and director of the watchdog group Venezuelan Prisons Observatory.
Varela indicated the situation had stabilized on Monday and said authorities planned to talk with inmates “to try to impose order there.”
Varela said the riot apparently began when a gun went off while armed inmates were talking in a workshop and administrative area.
She said those behind the killings “are going to have to answer for this.”
Carlos Nieto, an activist who monitors human rights in Venezuelan prisons, said the gunbattle lasted about four hours and involved groups fighting for control.
Yajaira Morroy, the mother of a 27-year-old inmate at the prison, said her son suffered a gunshot wound in a leg and had been trying to help a relative of another inmate who was wounded and then died. She said her son managed to reach a guard post and was taken to a hospital.
Morroy said during a telephone interview that the situation inside the prison had calmed and that some relatives who had been stranded inside were able to come out. However, she said that armed inmates were in control and that National Guard troops had not gone inside.
Outside the prison, inmates’ relatives wept while they waited for word about the men inside.
Violence has recently worsened inside Venezuela’s prisons, where inmates often obtain weapons and drugs with the help of corrupt guards.
Nieto said the riot shows that the “most serious prison problem, the weapons possessed by inmates, hasn’t been solved.” He noted that less than a month ago, another bloody riot erupted at another prison in Merida state. While officials said the death toll was 11, the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory said it had reports that about 30 people were killed.
Nationwide, the group says that 560 people were killed in Venezuelan prisons last year and that the pace of the violence increased during the first half of this year, with at least 304 inmates killed.
Venezuela currently has 33 prisons built to hold about 12,000 inmates, but officials have said the prisons’ population is about 47,000.
More than 3,000 inmates fill Yare I prison, which was built to hold 750, according to the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory.
Following a deadly armed uprising last year in the prisons El Rodeo I and El Rodeo II, just outside Caracas, Chavez announced plans for changes to the country’s troubled penal system including building new prisons, improving conditions and speeding trials for inmates who have yet to be sentenced. Since then, Chavez has approved funds to repair and renovate prisons.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to