Great massacre leaves at least 68 injured in a Guayaquil jail
New conflicts left "around 68 dead" in Prison Number 1 in Guayaquil, Ecuador, during the night of Friday, November 12, according to the Prosecutor's Office.
The confrontation took place in a prison where just over a month earlier, on September 29, the deadliest conflicts in Ecuador's prison history took place, in which 119 detainees died.
At first, specialists detailed 58 deaths, however, later the attorney general declared an increase in the figure to "around 68" according to "first reports."
Another 25 detainees were injured during the battle
The National Service for Comprehensive Attention to Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders (SNAI), the supervisory body of Ecuadorian prisons, reported on Twitter that:
"The National Police, Prosecutor's Office and Criminalistics began the strategy of checking the wounded, deceased and more evidence."
Through a similar channel, Guillermo Lasso, the nation's leader, sent his condolences to the "families that lost their friends and relatives" and pointed to the foundations of the Ecuadorian State.
"Particularly to the Constitutional Court. We want the appropriate mechanisms to be established to secure the population, recover the request in the detention centers and fight against the mafias that benefit from the confusion," he expressed.
The president also held a meeting early in the afternoon on Saturday with the Security Committee for the latest episodes in prisons.
Around 300 detainees have died this year, in the prison scaffolding in Ecuador, where many prisoners are linked to classified possessions and the competitions between various gatherings often lead to riots.
"Power void"
The disturbance on Friday was caused by a power vacuum after the arrival of the head of the Tiguerones post, Pablo Arosemena, legislative leader of the Guayas territory, where this prison is located.
The conflicts occurred in structure number 2 of the place of detention, which houses some 700 detainees.
"The scenario of the present circumstance was that there was no instigator of the pack that has been present in that structure for days before, that the pioneer had surrendered in view of the fact that he had completed 60% of his punishment," said Arosemena in a questions and answers session. "Since that cell block was without a pioneer, different cell blocks with different packages tried to break them, to make a killing," he added.
Arosemena also said that there was a regrettable "level of cruelty."
Many relatives of the detainees gathered at the gates of the prison to ask for information about their friends and relatives.
" They are people, help them," read a poster of a relative.
Cristina Monserrat, 58, was waiting to receive news about her younger brother, who has been in jail for a year.
"What is happening inside is unforgivable, individuals kill each other, and curiously they have no soul," Monserrat said, according to the Reuters news agency. "My brother is alive, my heart tells me."
Wave of protests
An avalanche of riots in 2021 has shaken the prisons of this South American nation, where some 39,000 detainees live respectively. The episodes that occurred in February and July in some detention centers left 79 and 22 dead, individually.
In the last massacre in the Guayaquil jail, in September, part of the dead were guillotined and roasted, and many others were injured.
In September, President Lasso proclaimed a 60-day highly sensitive situation in the prison setting, opening reserves and allowing more notable controls with military aid.
In some police tasks since the highly sensitive situation was pronounced, particularly in the Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil, weapons, projectiles, knives, ammunition, telephones and medicines were traced.