At least 15 dead inmates and another 20 injured leaves a new fight between prisoners registered this Monday in the Cotopaxi Number 1 prison, near the city of Latacunga, in the center of the Andes of Ecuador.
The National Comprehensive Care Service (SNAI) for Persons Deprived of Liberty, in charge of controlling Ecuador’s prisons, which initially announced six wounded, raised the number of victims after the first actions carried out after regaining control of the prison.
The number of victims, preliminary and according to official investigations, “It would unfortunately be 15 people dead and 20 injured “according to a SNAI source, when responding to rumors that warned of no less than 18 deaths.
A rumor has also gained strength on social networks that warned that one of the deceased would be Leandro Norero, accused of leading a drug trafficking gang.
Speaking to journalists, the deputy director of the SNAI, Jorge Flores, He explained that the incidents began after this Monday the inmates of the Latacunga prison participated in the census carried out by their institution. to collect data on the country’s prison population.
According to the SNAI report, units from the Police, the Ministry of Health, the Fire Department, the Ecuadorian Social Security Institute (IESS) and support teams from the Armed Forces have acted during the emergency.
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After reporting the alert at the Cotopaxi Deprivation of Liberty Center, the SNAI coordinated with the Police the activation of “all security protocols, in order to protect (protect) the security of the prison“.
Given the incidents recorded among the inmates, tactical Police teams entered the penitentiary facilities to try to regain full control of the prison, while military teams guarded the surroundings.
According to images of people traveling along a road near the prison, several prisoners took refuge on the roof of the building to try to avoid the problems recorded inside. Likewise, it was rumored on social networks that some of the inmates of the female pavilion had warned of the incidents and feared that the violence would eventually affect them directly.
On September 20, the Ecuadorian Police had reported the arrest of three agents of that institution for being involved in the crime of ammunition trafficking, when they allegedly tried to bring almost 500 bullets into the Cotopaxi prison.
(You may be interested in: Bolsonaro: ‘Change can be worse; look at Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela’).
Ecuador has 36 prisons that house more than 32,000 inmates and in some of them more than 400 inmates have been killed since 2020 in different confrontations between rival criminal gangs that dispute the internal control of the prison centers. In the different police searches after the confrontations, the Police have found different types of firearms, including rifles, as well as knives and large amounts of bullets.
With the victims registered this Monday, the number of prisoners who have died in Ecuadorian prisons since the beginning of 2022 is close to reaching one hundred, mainly in four massacres: two in the Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas prison, another in the Cuenca prison and now he is in the Latacunga prison.
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