{"id":7542,"date":"2021-09-30T08:37:36","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T12:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7542"},"modified":"2021-09-30T08:37:36","modified_gmt":"2021-09-30T12:37:36","slug":"ecuador-declares-prison-emergency-after-116-killed-in-riot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7542","title":{"rendered":"Ecuador Declares Prison Emergency After 116 Killed in Riot"},"content":{"rendered":"
Women hug while waiting for some information about their relatives who are inmates at Litoral Penitentiary, after a prison riot, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Wednesday, September 29, 2021. The authorities report at least 100 dead and 52 injured in the riot on Tuesday at the prison. (AP Photo\/Angel DeJesus)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ecuador\u2019s president has declared a state of emergency in the prison system following a battle among gang members in a coastal lockup that killed at least 116 people and injured 80 in what authorities say was the worst prison bloodbath ever in the country.<\/p>\n

Officials said at least five of the dead were found to have been beheaded.<\/p>\n

President Guillermo Lasso decreed a state of emergency Wednesday, which will give the government powers that include deploying police and soldiers inside prisons. The order came a day after bloodshed at the Litoral penitentiary in Guayaquil that officials blamed on gangs linked to international drug cartels fighting for control of the facility.<\/p>\n

Lasso, visibly moved by the carnage, said at a news conference that what had happened in the prison was \u201cbad and sad.\u201d He also said he could not guarantee that authorities had regained control of the lockup.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is regrettable that the prisons are being turned into territories for power disputes by criminal gangs,\u201d he said, adding that he would act with \u201cabsolute firmness\u201d to regain control of the Litoral prison and prevent the violence from spreading to other penitentiaries.<\/p>\n

Images circulating on social media showed dozens of bodies in the prison\u2019s Pavilions 9 and 10 and scenes that looked like battlefields. The fighting was with firearms, knives and bombs, officials said. Earlier, regional police commander Fausto Buena\u00f1o had said that bodies were being found in the prison\u2019s pipelines.<\/p>\n

Outside the prison morgue, the relatives of inmates wept, with some describing to reporters the cruelty with which their loved ones were killed, decapitated and dismembered.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the history of the country, there has not been an incident similar or close to this one,\u201d said Ledy Z\u00fa\u00f1iga, the former president of Ecuador\u2019s National Rehabilitation Council.<\/p>\n

Z\u00fa\u00f1iga, who was also the country\u2019s minister of justice in 2016, said she regretted that steps had not been taken to prevent another massacre following deadly prison riots last February.<\/p>\n

Earlier, officials said the violence erupted from a dispute between the \u201cLos Lobos\u201d and \u201cLos Choneros\u201d prison gangs.<\/p>\n

Col. Mario Pazmi\u00f1o, the former director of Ecuador\u2019s military intelligence, said the bloody fighting shows that \u201ctransnational organized crime has permeated the structure\u201d of Ecuador\u2019s prisons, adding that Mexico\u2019s Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels operate through local gangs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to sow fear,\u201d he told The Associated Press on Wednesday, urging the government to temporarily cede control of the prisons to the National Police. \u201cThe more radical and violent the way they murder,\u201d the more they achieve their goal of control, he added.<\/p>\n

Ecuador\u2019s president said that care points had been set up for relatives of the inmates with food and psychological support. He added that a $24 million program to address the country\u2019s prisons will be accelerated, starting with investments in infrastructure and technology in the Litoral prison.<\/p>\n

The former director of Ecuador\u2019s prison bureau, Fausto Cobo, said that inside penitentiaries authorities face a \u201cthreat with power equal to or greater than the state itself.\u201d He said that while security forces must enter prisons with shields and unarmed, they are met by inmates with high-caliber weapons.<\/p>\n

In July, the president decreed another state of emergency in Ecuador\u2019s prison system following several violent episodes that resulted in more than 100 inmates being killed. Those deaths occurred in various prisons and not in a single facility like Tuesday\u2019s massacre.<\/p>\n

Previously, the bloodiest day occurred in February, when 79 prisoners died in simultaneous riots in three prisons in the country. In July, 22 more prisoners lost their lives in the Litoral penitentiary, while in September a penitentiary center was attacked by drones leaving no fatalities.<\/p>\n

– Gabriela Molina, AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ecuador\u2019s president has declared a state of emergency in the prison system following a battle among gang members in a coastal lockup that killed at least 116 people and injured 80 in what authorities say was the worst prison bloodbath ever in the country. Officials said at least five of the dead were found to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":7545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/afs-prod\/media\/b149861a407942c6b58d73954fb2f297\/800.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"Ecuador Declares Prison Emergency After 116 Killed in Riot","footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7544,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7542\/revisions\/7544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}