Deadly prison riots as gangs battle
Ecuador has experienced its deadliest ever prison riots after seemingly co-ordinated fights broke out in facilities in three different cities, leaving 79 inmates dead as of yesterday and exposing the limited control that authorities have over people behind bars.
Hundreds of police officers and military personnel converged on the prisons after the unrest began Monday night in the maximumsecurity wings as rival gangs fought for leadership.
President Lenı´n Moreno, whose term ends in May, said he will ask other South American countries for help to tackle the crisis in Ecuador’s prisons and acknowledged the system is deficient and lacks financial resources.
Inmates in two prisons attempted to keep fighting yesterday despite a heavy police response.
About 70 per cent of the country’s prison population lives in the centres where the unrest occurred. The national agency responsible for the prisons said 37 inmates died in the Pacific coast city of Guayaquil, 34 in the southern city of Cuenca and eight in the central city of Latacunga.
Ecuador’s prisons were designed for 27,000 inmates but house about 38,000. Their maximum-security areas tend to house inmates linked to killings, drug trafficking, extortion and other major crimes.
Authorities have said this week’s clashes were precipitated by authorities’ search for weapons.
Prisons Director Edmundo Moncayo said then that two groups were trying to gain “criminal leadership within the detention centres” and 800 police officers were working to regain control of the facilities.
Ricardo Camacho, a security analyst and former prisons undersecretary, said the clashes are a purely domestic issue.
“They are disputes between national gangs that seek to monopolise the power that was left vacant in the prisons by the death of a criminal leader in December, and that has given way to this massacre with violence never before seen,” Camacho said.