At least two prisoners died and five others were injured this Monday in a new riot that occurred in Ecuador, this time in the prison of the city of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, located in the center of the country, according to the Minister of the Interior, Patricio Carillo.
The head of the Interior portfolio explained that the victims are the product of a new confrontation between the same rival gangs that last month staged a massacre in the Cuenca prison that left twenty inmates dead and at least another twenty wounded.
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During this new riot in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, which began between 2:30 and 3 am local time when gangs of “Los Lobos” and one of their factions called “R7” clashed, there were around 40 inmates who tried to escape from the prison but were able to be recaptured by the security forces.
(Also: Violence continues in prisons in Ecuador: 15 injured in Quito prison)
To control the situation, the National Police sent agents to support the prison guards of the National Service for Comprehensive Care of Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders of Ecuador (SNAI), the body in charge of prisons in the country.
According to the Minister of the Interior, the security forces already have the minimum and medium security pavilions under control, but not the maximum security one.
Carrillo anticipated that, once the entire prison is under control, a thorough search of the facilities will be carried out, as occurred in the recent episode in Cuenca, where firearms were found, including several assault rifles and automatic weapons.
“We are controlling and arranging some actions so that violence does not break out in the rest of the (penitentiary) centers,” added the head of the Interior, who also anticipated that the leaders of the gangs involved will be transferred to the maximum security prison of La Roca, in the coastal province of Guayas.
The prison crisis in Ecuador
In Ecuador, nearly 400 inmates have died in the last two years in clashes between rival organizations linked to drug trafficking that the internal control of the prisons is disputed and that it has ramifications inside and outside the penitentiary centers, according to the authorities.
On April 25, fifteen prisoners were injured in clashes between inmates inside the El Inca prison in Quito.
On the other hand, at the beginning of April, the leaders of the gangs that provoked confrontations on April 3 in the Turi prison, in the Andean city of Cuenca (south of the country), were transferred to the prison known as La Roca, in which Twenty inmates died.
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It was the first violent act of great magnitude registered this year in that prison, where on February 23, 2021, 33 inmates were murdered, most of them decapitated and dismembered, as part of a simultaneous attack coordinated by criminal gangs in different prisons that, in total, left 78 dead throughout the country.
Last September, an attack was reported on the Guayaquil regional prison carried out with drones, which caused several explosions, although no victims.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has called on Ecuador to increase personnel in prisons in charge of security and surveillance of the centers, recover spaces now occupied by criminal gangs and develop a policy that prioritizes crime prevention and not imprisonment.
Earlier this month, the director of the Community Assistance Program Against Transnational Organized Crime (EL PAcCTO), Xavier Cousquer, reported that the European Union (EU) had allocated 2.5 million euros ($2.6 million) to collaborate urgently in efforts to alleviate the prison crisis in Ecuador through training and prisoner classification tools.
EFE
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