(Quito) Three days after the massacre in Guayaquil prison, in southwest Ecuador, the Ecuadorian government announced on Friday the dispatch of 3,600 police and military reinforcements to “guarantee security” in all prisons from the country.
The government will keep “3,600 members of the national police and armed forces mobilized permanently and daily in all prisons in Ecuador” to “guarantee security there,” said Interior Minister Alexandra Vela during of a press conference in Quito.
At least 118 inmates were killed Tuesday in gang violence in one of the prisons in the sprawling Guayaquil prison complex, the worst massacre in Latin American prison history.
The violence on Tuesday was particularly bloody, with mutilated and beheaded bodies.
Many families of detainees were still in anguish over the identification of their loved one on Friday and were waiting in front of the prison or the morgue.
Video of his beheaded son
“I came because a video was sent to me by cell phone, I recognized his decapitated head,” Ermes Duarte told AFP, who came to inquire about the fate of his son, of whom he is without news since Monday. He “had only 15 days to go before being released.”
PHOTO FERNANDO MENDEZ, FRANCE-PRESS AGENCY
Two women await news from a relative who is being held in Guayaquil prison in Ecuador on October 1, 2021. An outbreak of violence has left 118 people dead, some beheaded, and 86 injured. Prisoners from rival drug cartels have gone to war armed with guns and grenades.
Another man, Daniel Villacis, lost three sons in the massacre, Jhony, Dany and Darwin. He recovered the bodies of two of them. “But the police still don’t want to give me the third of my children,” he said.
According to these families, block 5 of a wing of Guayas prison was attacked by members of rival gangs, who were able to enter the premises through holes dug in the walls.
Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso has since declared a “state of emergency”, lasting 60 days, in the 65 prisons of the country, where violence has been recurring for years between criminal groups linked to the Mexican cartels.
The latest violence brings the number of detainees killed since the start of the year to 236. In February, 79 prisoners were killed in simultaneous riots in four prisons in three cities, including Guayaquil. In 2020, the death toll was 103.
The Guayaquil penitentiary center, where the last clashes took place, alone has 8,500 inmates, with an overcrowding of 60%, according to official figures.
PHOTO VICENTE GAIBOR DEL PINO, REUTERS
Relatives of detainees pray outside the prison in Guayaquil, Ecuador, September 30, 2021. For the relatives of the victims, without news of their son, brother or nephew, the wait in front of the morgue is torture.
The authorities said Thursday evening that they had regained full control of the premises.
“Everything is calm, the detainees are in their cells. They did not seize the rooms ”, assured the police commander Tannya Varela, at the end of an operation involving 900 police officers and members of“ tactical units ”.
Amnesty
Speaking to the minister on Friday, the Director of Prisons, Bolivar Garzon, said the government was considering granting amnesty to some 2,000 prisoners over 65, suffering from illnesses or disabilities.
This measure aims to unclog the Ecuadorian prison system, with a capacity of 30,000 places, but faced for several years with chronic overcrowding, a lack of guards, budget cuts, corruption and gang warfare.
The armed forces indicated for their part to have operated “a control of weapons, ammunition, explosives and other objects” at the entrances and access routes of the prisons, “by using land, river and air means”.
In Guayaquil’s only prison, inspections led to the seizure of three pistols, 435 ammunition, 25 bladed weapons and three explosive devices.
Overcrowded Ecuadorian prisons have for months been the scene of recurrent violence between drug trafficking gangs linked in particular to the formidable Mexican cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generacion.
There are 65 prisons for 39,000 inmates, half of whom are awaiting conviction, with a capacity of around 30,000 places, according to official figures. Almost 10% of the prison population is foreign, mainly Colombians and Venezuelans.
The total number of prisoners has increased by 30% over the past six years, against a budget reduced from $ 150 million to $ 99 million during the same period.