Published on : 10/05/2022 – 04:55
Clashes between prisoners from different gangs on Monday left at least 43 dead and 13 injured in the overcrowded penitentiary establishment of Bellavista, Ecuador. A hundred other detainees were able to escape thanks to the violence, police said.
At least 43 prisoners died in clashes between rival gangs on Monday (May 9) in the overcrowded prison of Bellavista, in the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas in Ecuadorannounced the office of the attorney general on its Twitter account.
For his part, the Minister of the Interior, Patricio Carrillo, had mentioned 41 deaths during a press conference. “Thirteen people have been hospitalized, several of whom are seriously injured, it is possible that the number (of deaths) will increase,” he commented.
On site, wounded with facial wounds were taken care of by ambulances and relatives of detainees crowded around the prison center in an attempt to obtain information, AFP noted.
According to the Ecuadorian police chief, “the attackers acted with great cruelty”, while the violence was followed by a mass escape.
If the authorities gave no figure on the total number of escapees, 112 of them might be “recaptured”, but 108 were still “missing” Monday followingnoon, according to the head of the police, General Fausto Salinas. “250 police, 200 soldiers and additional reinforcements are on the way”, he detailed.
A “massacre” between gangs described
“This is the regrettable result of gang violence,” the president lamented on Twitter. Guillermo Lasso, on tour in Israel. He sent his “sincere condolences to the families” of those who died.
My deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those who died in the riot at the Sto prison. Sunday. This is an unfortunate result of gang violence. the interior minister @CarrilloRosero is in charge of operations to restore peace.
— Guillermo Lasso (@LassoGuillermo) May 9, 2022
The clashes between members of two rival gangs, the “Wolves” and the “R7”, broke out around 3 a.m., said the minister, causing the triggering of “security protocols” to contain “disorders “in the jail. “The majority of the victims, if not almost 100%, were killed with knives, not with firearms”, and “their mutilated corpses left behind”.
“They were executed in the common rooms, in the cells”, then “there was a massive escape attempt” with the use of firearms, admitted Patricio Carrillo.
“Those who are allowed to move between the different blocks within the prison are probably those who are behind this massacre,” he said, referring to a “scenario identical to that of April 28 in the prison of El Turi, where members of the ‘Wolves’ had previously faced ‘R7′”. Some twenty prisoners had died there, once more most of them mutilated with knives.
Government inaction castigated
Clashes, often extremely violent, are recurrent in Ecuadorian prisons, where nearly 350 detainees have died since February 2021.
According to the government, rival gangs of drug traffickers, infiltrated or controlled by Mexican cartels, are waging an all-out war for control of overcrowded prisons, a war that authorities have so far been powerless to stem.
But Irene Salazar, a relative of an inmate, denounced the fact that the government remained “idle” in the face of prison violence. “Why is the government not doing anything? He is negotiating…negotiating what? More money for him! And the starving poor,” the 29-year-old told AFP.
For Daniel Ponton, dean of the School of Security and Defense of the Institute of Advanced National Studies (IAEN), the “relocation policy” of the most dangerous prisoners, exfiltrated from large prisons, is at the origin of this outbreak of violence in prisons hitherto “relatively calm”, which might result in a “worrying generalization of the problem”. The escape of many prisoners also indicates that it is “a low security prison”, and therefore “extremely vulnerable”.
With a capacity of 1,200 places, the Bellavista prison currently accommodates 1,700 prisoners.
With AFP