Santo Domingo de los Colorados, Ecuador, May 11 (AFP\/APP): Ecuadoran police on Tuesday said 200 convicts who escaped following a deadly prison riot have been recaptured in 24 hours, with 20 still at large.<\/p>\n
At least 44 inmates died after a fight broke out Monday between the rival Los Lobos and R7 gangs at Bellavista prison in Santo Domingo de los Colorados, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Quito.<\/p>\n
Ten more were injured, according to police.<\/p>\n
Authorities had initially said that 108 prisoners got away.<\/p>\n
“A total of 220 citizens escaped yesterday and at this moment we have recaptured 200,” said police chief of operations Geovanny Ponce, giving an update Tuesday.<\/p>\n
He said the government was offering up to $3,000 for information leading to the recapture of the remaining 20 fugitives.<\/p>\n
Soldiers were deployed to help search for escapees, and AFP reporters at saw security forces rounding up about 80 people believed to have been among those recaptured.<\/p>\n
Distraught relatives of inmates waited for news outside the Bellavista prison on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Ponce said 41 of the dead inmates had been identified so far, and two of them were Venezuelan.<\/p>\n
“They’re not giving us any information. They say that young men escaped to save their lives,” said Leisi Zambrano, desperate for news about her brother.<\/p>\n
“There are many mothers who still have not received any news about their loved ones. They don’t even know if they are alive,” she added.<\/p>\n
Zambrano, 48, said she had rushed to the prison with other family members as soon as she heard about the riot.<\/p>\n
“We heard prisoners calling for help, asking that we don’t let them die,” said Zambrano.<\/p>\n
“It was a massacre inside.”
\nShocking online video footage of the riot aftermath showed a pile of bloody, mutilated bodies in a common room and corpses littering prison corridors next to mattresses that showed signs of having been set on fire.<\/p>\n
Prior to the latest riot, some 350 inmates had been killed in five separate uprisings in Ecuador’s hopelessly overcrowded prisons since February 2021.<\/p>\n
Just last month, at least 20 inmates died at the El Turi prison in Cuenca, southern Ecuador.<\/p>\n
President Guillermo Lasso insists the problem inside the facilities mirrors that outside, where drug gangs are vying for control of trafficking routes.<\/p>\n
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, via spokeswoman Liz Throssell, on Tuesday expressed “deep alarm at recurring prison violence” in Ecuador.<\/p>\n
“These worrying incidents once again highlight the urgent need for a comprehensive reform of the criminal justice system, including the penitentiary system to tackle what has been a protracted crisis in the country,” she said in Geneva.<\/p>\n
“We emphasize that the responsibility of the State for the security of all people in its custody creates a presumption of State responsibility for these deaths and call for a full investigation of these incidents.”<\/p>\n
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also condemned the violence and urged the government to launch a “prompt, serious and impartial” investigation.<\/p>\n
Nestled between the world’s biggest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has seen a surge of violence blamed on fighting between rival drug groups.<\/p>\n
The country of 17.7 million people is popular with traffickers because of its porous borders, a dollarized economy and major seaports for export.<\/p>\n
Prisons are overcrowded and short on guards, and rampant corruption means inmates can lay their hands on all sorts of contraband, including firearms and explosives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Santo Domingo de los Colorados, Ecuador, May 11 (AFP\/APP): Ecuadoran police on Tuesday said 200 convicts who escaped following a deadly prison riot have been recaptured in 24 hours, with 20 still at large. At least 44 inmates died after a fight broke out Monday […]<\/p>\n
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