At least 116 dead in Ecuador prison gang clash, some beheaded
- Gang clashes linked to drug cartels fighting for control of jail
- President decrees state of emergency in Ecuador’s prison system
Ecuador’s president declared the prison system under emergency for the second time since he took power in May after gang violence at a Guayaquil penitentiary claimed the lives of at least 116 people, in one of the bloodiest jail riots in the history of Latin America.
President Guillermo Lasso travelled to Guayaquil to discuss the security situation. The president previously declared a prison emergency in July when a riot left 18 dead.
The riot that took place on Tuesday at the Penitenciaria del Litoral in Guayas province also left 80 more wounded and authorities were still working to determine the full toll. At least six were beheaded.
Inmates went to war armed with guns and grenades: a clash between prisoners believed to be linked to Mexican drug gangs – mainly the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels.
Two police officers were wounded in the operation to retake control of the prison. Officers were attacked by inmates with guns.
A police charge on the prison had prevented “more deaths,” said the police chief for the city of Guayaquil, Fausto Buenano.
Tuesday’s violence was the latest in a series of bloody prison clashes that have claimed the lives of about 180 inmates in Ecuador so far this year.
“In the history of the country, there has not been an incident similar or even close to this one,” said Ledy Zuniga, the former president of Ecuador’s National Rehabilitation Council.
Zuniga, who was also the country’s minister of justice, said she regretted that steps had not been taken to prevent another massacre following deadly prison riots last February.
Images circulating on social media showed dozens of bodies in the Guayas prison’s Pavilions 9 and 10. The macabre images from inside the prison were matched by the wails of relatives of prisoners waiting outside along with armoured vehicles, soldiers and ambulances.
“We want information because we don’t know anything about our families, our sons,” said one woman, who would not give her name. “I have my son there.”
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Earlier in the day, the confirmed death toll had stood at 30, but police said that bodies found in the prison’s pipelines were still being identified.
Last week, police confiscated two pistols, a revolver, some 500 rounds of ammunition, a hand grenade, several knives, two sticks of dynamite and home-made explosives at one of the city’s prisons.
Two weeks ago, Guayaquil’s Prison Number 4 was attacked by drones, part of “a war between international cartels,” prison authorities said. There were no casualties in that attack.
“There has been a prison crisis since 2010, with an average of 25 homicides per year, but it has accelerated significantly from 2017 to the peak of this year,” Ecuadorean security expert Fernando Carrion said.
Ecuador’s prison system has 65 facilities designed for about 30,000 but which house an actual population of 39,000 inmates. There are chronic staffing shortages.
The country’s human rights ombudsman said there were 103 killings in prisons in 2020, with corruption enabling inmates to bring in arms and ammunition.
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Located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s leading cocaine producers, Ecuador is a key transit for drug shipments to the United States and Europe.
Guayaquil is Ecuador’s main port city.
Between January and August this year, Ecuadorean authorities seized about 116 tonnes of drugs, mainly cocaine, compared to 128 tonnes in all of 2020.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has condemned the ongoing violence in Ecuador’s prisons.
Bloomberg, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
