Riots in Ecuadorian prisons already leave three prisoners dead

2024-01-13 06:03:42

The record of prisoners who died during the series of simultaneous riots that occurred in Ecuador this Friday it rose to threeas reported by the National Comprehensive Care Service (SNAI) for Persons Deprived of Liberty, the State penitentiary agency.

The third reported death occurred in the Cuenca prison, one of the six in which riots have been recorded so far where Inmates took more than 150 prison officers hostagethe vast majority prison guards.

Earlier They were thrown from inside the prisons. corpses of two inmates in the Machala and Azogues prisons, as also confirmed by the SNAI.

Subsequently, the Armed Forces regained control of the Machala prison, in the southern province of El Oro. To date, riots continue in the prisons of the northern city of Esmeraldas, the central cities of Latacunga and Ambato, and the southern cities of Cuenca, Azogues and Loja.

In the city of Latacunga, a group of relatives gathered to demand the Government release their relatives after four days held inside the prison. However, The Executive remains in the position of not negotiating after having declared the “internal armed conflict” after the succession of violent actions by organized crime that took place on Tuesday, where in addition to the riots, explosions, kidnapping and murder of police officers and the armed assault on a television channel were recorded.

With that declaration, the criminal gangs came to be considered by the Government as terrorist groups and belligerent non-state actors, and therefore military objectives to be neutralized.

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The violence crisis has left at least 16 dead so farincluding two police officers who were murdered on Tuesday.

The events occurred when the Government of President Daniel Noboa was preparing to implement its plan to regain control of Ecuadorian prisons, many of them internally dominated by these criminal groups, whose rivalries have left more than 450 prisoners murdered since 2020 in a series of prison massacres. This violence has also moved to the streets to make Ecuador one of the most violent countries in the world with 45 intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023.