Relatives of rioting prisoners await news outside the Litoral Penitentiary, Guayaquil, on April 14, 2023.VICENTE GAIBOR DEL PINO (REUTERS)
A new confrontation between prisoners in the Litoral Penitentiary, in Guayaquil, has left 12 people dead, according to the Ecuadorian Prosecutor's Office one day after an alert was activated for a shootout between four pavilions in the most dangerous prison in the country.
The riot began this Friday at noon and was dissipated at dawn.
Confirmation of the number of deceased has been known almost 24 hours after the start of the incidents, when the Criminalistics agents have managed to enter the prison.
On Friday, the bullets rumbled throughout the prison complex, where in addition to the Penitentiary there is the Regional prison, the women's prison and the Rock, which are supposed to be maximum security.
Until March of this year, the complex housed a total of 12,232 people, although its capacity is 9,500.
According to police sources, the disturbances occurred between the groups of Los Tiguerones and Fatales, due to the release of a leader of this gang.
It was a visiting day for relatives, who are mostly women who were waiting in line outside to pass the controls.
Many of them denounce that they are even forced to undress to make sure that prohibited objects do not enter.
Inside the prisons of Ecuador, however, what is most there are large-caliber weapons, explosives and illicit substances, as has been verified in the operations carried out by the Police.
The pavilions are distributed among the different gangs, which have control of the prison and have built trenches and checkpoints there for their own security control.
This is the third incident that has been recorded in that jail in the last week.
The first was on Wednesday, April 12, when six prisoners were found hanging in one of the cells.
So far the authorities have not reported the causes of this event, which add to another 60 "collective deaths" in the last two years.
A third event occurred on Thursday, April 13, when three prison guides were shot while they were having lunch in a small restaurant in front of the prison.
Everything points to the fact that the hit man's order came from inside the prison, said Guillermo Rodríguez, director of the National System of Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), who went to the prison that day with a bulletproof vest and helmet.
"They want to maintain the
status quo
in the prisons," he said when referring to the possible causes of this crime.
They were three women between the ages of 26 and 31, two of whom had entered the service just four months ago.
The Public Ministry has opened another investigation into this crime.
Ecuador has endured 12 prison massacres since 2021. Eleven of them have occurred in the Government of Guillemos Lasso, in which 431 people have lost their lives and for which the Ecuadorian State has received observations from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Since 2021, this is the seventh massacre reported in Guayaquil prisons, in which around 260 people have been murdered.
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