A strong contingent of soldiers broke into the prison known as “La Tolva” in eastern Honduras early Tuesday morning to continue with a strong operation to disarm the gangs that are housed in that prison.
In the style of the operations carried out by the forces of order in El Salvador, since the day before the Honduran soldiers have been seeking to pacify the prisons, where violence and self-government prevail.
“The operation to seize and extract the Module of the MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha gang) in the Morocelí Penitentiary Center, La Tolva, is underway. No more prisons as crime schools!” Defense Minister José Manuel Zelaya wrote on Twitter.
The official reported that a document was issued ordering the relocation of inmates when necessary, regardless of their procedural status or degree of danger. He also establishes that the authorities can take any measure that is opportune to avoid incidents among the prison population.
“The penitentiary system in Honduras is a corrupted crime school and we are going to dismantle it and give security to the people,” the Defense Minister added in another tweet.
The trigger to intervene in the prisons was the massacre that occurred last week when members of the Barrio 18 gang were imprisoned they ended the lives of 46 deprived of liberty at the National Women’s Penitentiary for Social Adaptation located in Támara, 32 kilometers north of Tegucigalpa.
After the massacre, President Xiomara Castro ordered the management of the prisons to pass to the Military Police of Public Order, an elite commando of the Armed Forces. Until last week the prisons were administered by the National Police and the National Penitentiary Institute.
The disarmament operations began on Monday in the modules that house the most dangerous inmates and gang members, who were taken out to the patios while the soldiers searched their cells meticulously.
In the National Men’s Penitentiary in Támara, large-caliber weapons were seized, including a rifle, several pistols, ammunition, and three fragmentation grenades.
Gang violence in Honduras is not only recorded in prisons: these groups have a strong presence in neighborhoods and neighborhoods where they keep the population in fear with atrocious crimes and extortion charges.
The most recent major criminal act occurred on Saturday night in Choloma, in the department of Cortés, where hooded armed men shot 13 people to death in a pool hall, forcing President Castro to order a touchdown. remains and strong security operations in that municipality and in San Pedro Sula.
The National Police captured two suspects linked to the massacre in Choloma on Tuesday. On Monday he had arrested the first and all three are members of Barrio 18.
Retired Police Commissioner, lawyer and analyst Henry Osorto Canales, told PA that El Salvador and Honduras suffer the same phenomenon. “In El Salvador, a criminal policy was carried out directed against the gangs that had the population of that country on its knees, also in prisons. The only difference is to see if in El Salvador compliance with international regulations and treaties have not been violated”, he expressed in reference to the denunciations of human rights violations in the neighboring country.
For Osorto Canales, the actions of the Honduran security forces should not only be aimed at maintaining control in the prisons, but also in the persecution of criminals in the streets, with whom the inmates maintain contact.
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