New incidents caused by inmates on Tuesday left several injured in the Litoral Penitentiary, in Ecuador, reported the Service for Attention to Prisoners of Liberty, in a report about what happened in that facility, considered the most dangerous in the country and where almost three weeks there was a confrontation that ended with the death of 15 prisoners.
In a statement, that institution said that two inmates provoked the events, to which military and police personnel activated “the corresponding security protocols.”
He added that “injured people deprived of liberty are reported,” that they are receiving medical attention and that “under strict security controls, the evacuation of the center’s personnel is carried out,” but did not detail the number of injured, nor if the victims were injured. with a knife or firearm.
About three weeks ago, in that penitentiary, a fight broke out between prisoners that left 15 dead and 14 injured, becoming the bloodiest prison episode since President Daniel Noboa took power at the end of November of last year. That same prison, in the port city of Guayaquil, was the scene of the country’s worst massacre three years ago, with a death toll of 119.
Noboa also had to face, last January, to the detention for several days of 150 prison guards in the midst of a series of coordinated riots in several prisons. A prison officer was murdered.
This new incident of violence in a prison occurs when the Ecuadorian president is running for re-election in the elections in February next year, in the midst of a speech against criminal violence, which he has appealed to as one of his greatest flags.
The Litoral Penitentiary is occupied by nearly 10,000 inmates and is located on the outskirts of Guayaquil.
According to the authorities, the riots and massacres inside the prisons are the product of the dispute between criminal gangs for control of those places and for control of drug export routes and distribution territories within the country.
Ecuador faces the worst wave of violencepromoted by local gangs that, according to the police, are allied with cartels in Colombia and Mexico. Since 2021, there have been more than a dozen clashes in prisons that have left more than 400 dead.
So far this year, according to the Organized Crime Observatory, 5,717 homicides have been recorded, more than a thousand fewer deaths than in the same period last year, which authorities attribute to the military and police presence in prisons. and in the streets after President Noboa decreed a state of internal armed conflict in January.
The homicide rate in Ecuador last year was 47.25 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to authorities, placing the country among the most violent nations in the region, behind Venezuela and Honduras.
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