Gang Warfare in Ecuador’s Prisons Kills 62 inmate

Sixty-two inmates have died in riots at prisons in three cities in Ecuador as a result of fights between rival gangs and an escape attempt, authorities said Tuesday.

Prisons Director Edmundo Moncayo said; in a news conference that 800 police offices have been helping to regain control of the facilities. Hundreds of officers; from tactical units had been deployed; since the clashes broke out late Monday.

Moncayo said; that two groups were trying to gain “criminal leadership within the detention centers”; and that the clashes were precipitated; by a search for weapons carried out Monday by police officers.

Tuesday’s violence; which included grizzly mutilations by inmates who recorded the acts with cellphones; rattled a nation that has seen an increase in prison violence in recent years.

President Lenin Moreno said that 800 police officers were sent to regain control and that the military was deployed outside the prisons “to enforce strict control of guns, munitions, and explosives.” About 20 police officers were injured, authorities said.
Moncayo said 33 died at the prison in Cuenca in southern Ecuador; 21 in the Pacific coast city of Guayaquil, and eight in the central city of Latacunga.

Latin America’s notoriously overcrowded prisons are hotbeds for deadly riots and bloody fights between gangs. Violent gangs from Mexico to Colombia and Brazil often battle for control inside prisons; which they use to orchestrate drug trafficking and other criminal activities on the outside.

Moncayo said that close to 70 percent of the country’s prison population lives in the centers where the unrest occurred.

Minister of Government Patricio Pazmiño sent a tweet blaming “the concerted action of criminal organizations to generate violence in the country’s prisons,” but added; “We are managing actions to regain control.”