At least 75 inmates died on Tuesday and several were injured in riots blamed on gang rivalry at three jails in Ecuador’s overcrowded prison system, authorities said.
As security forces battled to regain control, distraught family members waited desperately for news outside the prison in the western port city of Guayaquil, where officials said 21 died.
Another 33 died at the prison in Cuenca in the south and eight in Latacunga in the center of the South American country, said Edmundo Moncayo, director of the government’s SNAI prisons management body.
Photo: Reuters
“We want the death list given to us,” said Daniela Soria, 29, one of about 40 women outside the Guayaquil prison, many of them in tears.
“We know that the problems are not over, because everyone there has a phone and my husband doesn’t call me,” she said.
Earlier, she received a WhatsApp voice message from her husband, Ricardo, which she played back reporters: “They are going to kill me, get me out of here,” he could be heard exclaiming, the last she heard from him.
Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno attributed the riots to “criminal organizations” engaged in “simultaneous acts of violence in several prisons.”
The authorities “are acting to retake control,” he wrote on Twitter.
The military was deployed to help police quell the uprising.
The public defender’s office, an entity akin to an ombudsman set up to defend human rights, called the violence “an unprecedented massacre” and expressed its “concern over the lack of security in the country, which is reflected in the increase in crime and violence inside these prison facilities.”
The prosecuting authority said several inmates were left injured in fighting between “criminal gangs,” including two at Guayaquil in serious condition.
Several police were also injured, but no deaths have been reported among security personnel, Moncayo said.
Police commander Patricio Carrillo described the situation as “critical,” while Ecuadoran Minister of the Interior Patricio Pazmino created a centralized command post to respond to what he said was “concerted action by criminal organizations to generate violence in penitentiary centers.”
The prison authority described fierce fighting between organized gangs that go by names such as Los Pipos, Los Lobos and Tigrones.
They rely on drug trafficking and operate their criminal enterprises from prison, the authority said.
Moncayo told reporters that on Monday, guards seized two firearms that were to be used to kill the leader of a group imprisoned in Guayaquil.
“Inside, it is like a market. There is everything: drugs, arms, even puppies. Everything is sold,” Soria said.
To reduce prisoner numbers amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the government commuted the sentences of people convicted of minor offenses, reducing overcrowding from 42 percent to 30 percent.
This still leaves Ecuador’s prison system, with a capacity to house 29,000 inmates in 60-odd facilities, with a prisoner population of 38,000.
There are 1,500 guards to oversee them.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS