2023-09-22 01:56:00
Rocket launchers, grenades and high-caliber ammunition, cryptocurrency mining machines, drugs and luxury motorcycles were exhibited this Thursday as part of what was seized in a prison in Venezuela, which functioned as the operations center of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang.
It is a reflection of the level of control that this feared criminal group born in Venezuela and that operates in several Latin American countries had in the Tocorón prison (Aragua state, north-central).
“It has been a successful, impeccable operation, which has allowed us to strike a hard blow against criminal groups,” the Minister of the Interior, Remigio Ceballos, congratulated himself at a press conference, offering an overview of the intervention of that penitentiary center, on Wednesday, with a huge deployment of 11,000 soldiers and police, supported by tanks and armored vehicles.
To one side of Ceballos at the entrance to the prison, mountains of high-caliber ammunition and war weapons were displayed as ‘war loot’: sniper rifles and hand grenades were on a table and two rocket launchers were displayed on the floor. anti-tank and explosives and detonators.
The minister did not specify quantities, nor any theory of how this weapon entered Tocorón or the control of the Aragua Train in that prison.
He announced that four officials were arrested during the takeover and accused of complicity with the criminals who dominated the prison and that there are several investigations underway to “establish responsibilities.”
“There will be no impunity. We are going against all criminals and accomplices,” Ceballos promised.
Bitcoin mining machines were displayed in the middle of the arsenal, guarded by members of the special actions brigade of the National Police, hooded and with rifles in hand, while the minister spoke to journalists.
In the background, a model made by police of this prison, which for years served as the base of the Aragua Train, a gang dedicated to crimes such as kidnapping, extortion, drug trafficking and human trafficking, and whose tentacles have expanded to other countries in the region. region such as Colombia, Chile or Peru in recent years.
The “pranes”, as they call the leaders of the inmates in the country’s overcrowded prisons in Venezuela, had such control of the place that they had built a kind of citadel in which they had a swimming pool, a baseball field, a zoo, a nightclub and even a banking agency.
Tocorón had about 1,600 inmates who are being transferred to other prisons, as the government announced that the prison will enter a “restructuring process” after their eviction.
Ceballos lamented the death of a soldier during the operation, prepared by the security forces for a year.
He noted that “more than 60 individuals belonging to a large criminal gang” were identified without expressly mentioning the Tren de Aragua or its leader Héctor Guerrero Flores, known as ‘Niño Guerrero’, sentenced to 17 years in prison for multiple homicides and drug trafficking. .
“We are obtaining high-level information, of a criminalistic nature” for “future captures.”
“That train derailed,” celebrated Attorney General Tarek William Saab. “That center of evil does not exist, the devastating blow to the center of gravity has been against the Aragua Train,” he said.
The minister stressed that these gangsters kept the rest of the prison population subdued: “There was mistreatment of those deprived (of liberty) by these criminal gangs, a kind of slavery.”
Columns of smoke rose the day before in the prison.
Ceballos said that the zoo animals died in a fire that, he said, was started by the prisoners themselves.
Dozens of relatives waited this Thursday outside the facility for news about the places where the prisoners were relocated. A group of women sang the national anthem as police with shields and riot gear surrounded them.
“Where is my son?” cried Doris Colmenares, mother of Enyer Colmenares, who escaped during the eviction and was captured shortly after.
“He turned himself in,” the mother told AFP while showing a photo on her cell phone where her son could be seen with another fugitive and the agents who caught them.
“I want information, I want answers,” commented Taiselis Nieves, 30, who was hoping to know about her husband’s fate.
Ceballos said that the human rights of the inmates were respected during the operation and that the transfers were being carried out normally.
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