Quito (EFE).- The State Attorney General’s Office confirmed this Saturday that twelve people deprived of their liberty died on Friday in a new brawl in the Litoral Penitentiary, the largest and most populous prison in Ecuador.
The Prosecutor’s Office indicated on Twitter that “it began a prior investigation ex officio, to identify those responsible for the death of 12 people deprived of liberty (PPL), inside the Litoral Penitentiary, in Guayaquil. The incident occurred yesterday afternoon.”
The confrontation, which involved prisoners from pavilions 3, 5, 8 and 9, began in the early hours of the afternoon and lasted until late Friday night, when numerous gunshots could be heard from outside the prison. fire.
The events occurred two days after 6 prisoners from pavilion 5 were found hanged in the same prison.
The penitentiary, Ronald Sánchez, pointed out this Saturday that there were no leaks in the midst of the crisis on Friday.
“We hope to have control of all this after the removal of the corpses, to be able to enter to count (the prisoners) in the pavilions,” he said before confirming that the shooting on Friday lasted “approximately four and a half hours” with weapons 9mm and rifle.
desperate families
While the identification work inside the prison continues, the relatives of the inmates wait desperately for information outside.
“Since this started, I don’t know anything, what I want is to know how he is, nothing more,” Alexandra Mansaba, the wife of a detainee, told the press, while a man interrupted her: “It’s the only thing we want to know , information about our son, all the families that are here are desperate.
“There are so many problems here, we don’t know if they are alive or dead, they don’t even send us a list of the dead, of the wounded, nothing is known,” he claimed.
In the midst of desperation, the demands of the relatives for information overlapped each other in a chorus of anguish asking that the prison director “come out, tell us how many are dead, how many are inside, a listed, they are not animals, they are human beings.
“I am here desperate to know if my son is dead or alive. My son is in (pavilion) 3,” said Jorge Quirola outside the prison, where soldiers are in custody.
Dozens of prisoners murdered in Ecuador
The Litoral Penitentiary has been the scene of some of the largest massacres recorded in Ecuadorian prisons since 2020, in which more than 450 prisoners have been killed, as a result of clashes between rival gangs that dispute internal control of the prisons. seclusion.
Added to this are prison conditions, with overcrowding that can reach 50% of the prison’s capacity in some cases.
The situation of violence has also spread to the streets, with organized crime groups in a dispute over control of drug trafficking routes, especially in the coastal area, where the ports that have made Ecuador one of the main springboards for cocaine reaching North America and Europe.
An example of this is the triple crime of three prison guards that took place on Thursday in front of the Litoral Penitentiary, where they were shot to death by alleged hit men when the three of them were having lunch together.