Violence in Ecuador: a prisoner was killed during a brutal riot in a Quito prison

A new riot was registered on Friday in a prison in the north of the capital of Ecuador, where it has been confirmed the murder of one of the inmates in the hands of his companions, although the police continue to search the place, the Service for Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty reported on Friday.

In his Twitter account, the entity responsible for the prison system assured that the situation occurred in the prison called The Inca, in which clashes between inmates broke out in the afternoon, for which reason the corresponding protocols were activated and operations were carried out, with the support of the police and prison security personnel. No further casualties have been reported.

This is the first riot of the year in the Ecuadorian prison system. In the same prison, in mid-November, there were attacks between prisoners who left 10 deaths for which the authorities sent the ringleaders to another high security prison.

In the Ecuadorian prison system they were registered in 2021 and last year brutal riotsespecially in the largest and most violent prison in the country, the Guayaquil Coastal Penitentiarycaused according to the official thesis by the dispute between rival gangs of organized crime of territories and national and international drug trafficking routes.

To deal with the situation, the government of the president William Lasso decided towards the end of the year to relocate the leaders of at least a dozen criminal gangs to another adjoining prison in Guayaquil, after rehabilitating it, in order to reduce acts of violence.

One of the last riots before the government’s decision occurred in October with a balance of 13 prisoners in the Litoral Penitentiary, where in September 2021 they were 126 inmates killed by their companions.

According to figures from the prison system, in 2021 some 316 inmates were killed by their companions, while in 2022 the figure reached 130 homicides.

Ecuador’s prison infrastructure has the capacity to 30,000 inmatesbut after a prison census it was detected that there are more than 31,000 inmates in the 53 state prisons in the country.

(With information from AP)

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