At least 15 prisoners on Monday died in the latest unrest inside Ecuador’s prison system, officials in the South American country reported.
The agency that manages Ecuador’s prisons, SNAI, gave the death toll in a statement which also said 21 people were injured in the clashes between inmates.
It had earlier announced that tactical units conducted operations to regain control of the facility in Latacunga.
Photo: Reuters
The prison houses about 4,300 prisoners and is one of the largest in the country.
Violence in Ecuador’s prisons, where drug gangs vie for power, is often carried out with knives and sometimes involves beheadings. The violence has left more than 400 prisoners dead since February last year.
On Monday, inmates climbed onto roofs while detonations were heard, television news footage showed.
SNAI deputy director Jorge Flores told reporters that Leandro Norero appeared to be “among the victims.”
Norero, suspected of links to drug trafficking, became one of the inmate leaders. Known by the alias “El Patron,” he was arrested in May last year for allegations of money laundering, in an operation in which US$6.4 million, 24 gold bars, firearms and ammunition were allegedly seized.
“Regarding the death of the defendant #LeandroN., #FiscaliaEc reports that after the corresponding identification experts will be able to confirm or not his death,” the Ecuadoran Attorney General’s office wrote on Twitter.
SNAI said that military and police tactical units worked to regain control of the prison in what provincial authorities called a successful operation.
“Control was retaken,” Cotopaxi Governor Oswaldo Coronel announced in the evening.
The country’s overcrowded prisons contain about 35,000 inmates, many of whom are members of gangs linked to drug trafficking, according to government estimates.
A government committee in April said that Ecuadoran prisons “are considered warehouses of human beings and torture centers.”
Bordered by Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest cocaine producers, Ecuador serves as a departure port for drug shipments, primarily to the US and Europe.
Last year, Ecuador seized a record 210 tonnes of drugs, mostly cocaine.
Last year, the country of 17.7 million people had a murder rate of 14 per 100,000, nearly double that of 2020.
In a bid to improve the living conditions in prisons, Ecuadoran President Guillermo Lasso launched an inmate census in August.
During a television interview on Monday, he offered “a message of condolence and solidarity with the families of those who died today in” the prison.
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