Guayaquil, 15 Nov: At least 68 prisoners were killed and more than two dozen injured in overnight violence at Ecuador’s Penitenciaria del Litoral prison, the government said on Saturday, in what officials characterize as fights among rival gangs.
The penitentiary, located in the southern city of Guayaquil, is the same prison where 119 inmates were killed in late September in the country’s worst-ever incident of prison violence.
The government has blamed disputes between drug trafficking gangs for control of prisons for the violence.
Dozens were gathered outside the prison waiting for news of loved ones, who many said they had not heard from since Friday (November 12) afternoon.
Relatives of inmates have said President Guillermo Lasso must do more to help the poor. Ecuador’s prison system has come under harsh spotlight in recent years for overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions and organized crime.
Lasso in September declared a 60-day state of emergency in the prison system, which freed up government funding and allowed for military assistance in control of the prisons.
The latest disturbance was set off by a power vacuum following a gang leader’s release, governor of Guayas province Pablo Arosemena said in a press conference earlier in the day.
There has been a wave of disturbances in the South American country’s prisons, which house some 39,000 detainees, since the December 2020 killing of ‘Rasquina,’ the leader of the Los Choneros gang, months after he was released from prison.
His death left a power vacuum, officials said at the time, as less well-known gangs attempted to take control of the country’s prisons. Gang rivalries are connected to competition for drug trafficking alliances with international cartels, ex-officials said.
Officials said a February incident which killed 79 detainees was a response to Rasquina’s death. Another 22 people died in a July riot.
Some of those killed in the September violence at Penitenciaria del Litoral were decapitated or burned, the attorney general’s office has said, and dozens were injured.
A total of 11 people were found hung in the penitentiary in October, which authorities have said may have been suicides.
-REUTERS
