Until this afternoon there were “12 deceased identified”, in addition to “10 wounded treated in the mobile brigades” in the vicinity of the prison and 90 inmates evacuated from there, reported the Ministry of Communication.
The situation “still” was not “controlled,” Interior Minister General Patricio Carrillo said at a press conference, according to the AFP news agency.
Carrillo maintained that the riot occurred because “there is an organization that wants to have absolute power within the center” and “there are some cells that have rebelled.”
“The riot is not controlled and the detonations continue inside the El Turi prison,” the local newspaper El Comercio reported on its Twitter account shortly after 1:00 p.m. (3:00 p.m. in Argentina).
The newspaper added that “the uniformed men are trying to control the prisoners with tear gas bombs” and highlighted that “the preliminary figure” was then “11 murdered decapitated.”
The government of the president Guillermo Lasso announced in a statement that “800 members of the Police and the Armed Forces were mobilized to the prison to protect it and control the acts of violence.”
Cuenca is located about 470 kilometers south of Quito.
The National Service for Comprehensive Care for Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders of Ecuador (SNAI) explained that at 1:30 “security protocols were activated” in the prison.
Lasso ordered Defense Minister Luis Hernández to travel to El Turi; the Secretary of Human Rights, Bernarda Ordóñez, and the Secretary of Communication, Eduardo Bonilla.
The Police affirmed that “it has deployed specialized units” in coordination with the SNAI and the Armed Forces “to carry out control actions in the event of possible incidents.”
Carrillo warned that “the government will take action to contain irrationality and radicalism within the prisons.”
Residents of the penitentiary affirmed that heard multiple shotslike shots and bombs, and they saw how National Police patrol cars began to arrive.
Family members of the inmates also began to gather around the prison, notified by them of what was happening by phone.
On February 23, 2021, a riot in the same prison left 34 inmates murdered, most of them decapitated and dismembered.
El Turi is one of the largest prison complexes in Ecuador and last February it housed 1,708 inmates.
A report from the end of 2021 detected 12 flaws in the security and control systems there, according to El Comercio.
At the end of February, the government announced that it would invest 27 million dollars this year in the rehabilitation of prisoners and that it would pardon inmates who have served 40% of their sentences, as part of a plan to overcome the crisis in the prison system.
Ecuador faces severe problems in this sector, which manifested itself last year with clashes between gangs inside prisons, which left 327 dead, which led the Executive to impose a 60-day state of emergency.
With 65 prisons with a total capacity for around 30,000 people, there are currently around 39,000 inmates in Ecuador, of which 15,000 have not yet been sentenced.
Source: Ambito
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