The body that administers prisons in Ecuador, the (SNAI), reported on Monday that at least 90 prison guards are being held in local jails after a violent confrontation between inmates that on Sunday left six dead in the Guayaquil penitentiary (southwest).
“At the moment, around 90 Prison Security Agents are reported being held in the Cotopaxi No. 1, Azuay No. 1, Cañar No. 2, El Oro No. 1 and Napo No. 1 Detention Centers,” the SNAI informed the press on its broadcast channel on the WhatsApp platform. And he added that the guards are in “good condition.”
The entity also pointed out that inmates from 13 prisons in the country declared a hunger strike in centers of the Andean provinces of Imbabura, Chimborazo, Tungurahua, Azuay, Cañar, Loja and Cotopaxi, as well as the coastal provinces of El Oro and Guayas and the Amazonian Napo.
Until Sunday, the inmates maintained this measure in ten of the country’s 36 prisons, including the Guayaquil penitentiary, also called Guayas 1.
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Authorities “promote dialogue with the spokespersons of the penitentiary centers to find out the reasons for the measures,” noted the SNAI.
The hunger strike began after news broke of a new and tragic brawl in the Guayaquil penitentiary. In that center, six inmates were killed on Sunday and eleven were injured in clashes between rival gangs that are fighting for control of the prisons and territories for the sale of drugs.
Since February 2021, there have been a dozen massive prison incidents that have claimed the lives of more than 420 inmates in Ecuador. Those inmate confrontations have left a trail of charred, dismembered and decapitated bodies.
To this is added the prison conditions, with overcrowding that can reach 50% of the prison’s capacity in some cases.
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A recent census established that in the 36 local prisons -with a capacity for some 30,000 people- there is a population of 31,321 prisoners, including 3,245 foreigners. Most were arrested for drug trafficking.
Last year, a pacification committee created by the government of President Guillermo Lasso branded Ecuadorian prisons “warehouses for human beings and torture centers.”
The National Comprehensive Care Service for Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders (SNAI) reports: pic.twitter.com/xaaEktL6Rq
— SNAI Ecuador 🇪🇨 (@SNAI_Ec) July 24, 2023
The situation of violence has also moved to the streets, with organized crime groups in dispute for control of drug trafficking routes.especially in the coastal area, where the ports that have made Ecuador one of the main springboards for cocaine that reaches North America and Europe are located.
Violence has escalated in Ecuador in recent months, leaving dozens of deaths in the country, which counts among its most recent cases the assassination on Sunday at mayor of the coastal city of Manta, Agustín Intriago, while conducting a construction inspection.
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A Venezuelan, who was driving the vehicle from which the shots were fired, was detained for investigations into the case, which also includes the death of a soccer player who was at the scene.
Ecuador, located between Colombia and Peru -the world’s main cocaine producers-, has seized 455 tons of drugs since Lasso took office in May 2021. In 2021, the annual record for drug seizures was recorded, some 210 tons.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With AFP and EFE
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