It had been more than twenty-four hours since they had been taken hostage. Fifty-seven prison guards and police officers, held by detainees in several prisons in Ecuador since Thursday evening, have been released, the national service for the comprehensive care of adults deprived of their liberty and adolescent offenders announced on Friday (September 1). (SNAI).
The fifty officers and seven police officers, “who were being held in six different prisons” across the country, “have already been released, have undergone medical assessments to verify their health, and are in good health,” the official said. Ecuadorian prison administration in a press release.
Laconic, the latter does not, however, give any other details either on the conditions of their release or on the circumstances of their hostage-taking, just like the authorities, who have observed complete silence since the announcement of the incident, the day before. .
Return to “normal” announced
“The Unified Command Post (PMU) directed the execution of the coordinated actions that achieved this objective,” the SNAI simply stated, stating, “Right now, activities are taking place as normal in the ‘penitentiary centers’ . “We are worried about the safety of our agents,” acknowledged Interior Minister Juan Zapata, referring to “planned actions” aimed at “guaranteeing their safety”.
The main hostage-taking apparently took place in Cuenca prison, in the southwest of the country. A video posted on social networks, relayed by the local press but impossible to authenticate with certainty, showed a group of men in uniform, apparently held in a cell and calling on the government to negotiate.
The surroundings of the penitentiary establishment remained completely inaccessible on Friday by three cordons of security forces which prevented vehicles from approaching less than 1 kilometer, noted on the spot a photographer from Agence France-Presse. From a nearby hill, three inmates could be seen on the roof of the prison, one of them dressed, like a Santa Claus, in pajamas, a cap on his head, and a walkie-talkie in his hand. .
Response of criminal groups to cell searches
According to the SNAI, the hostage-taking was “a response by criminal groups to the interventions of law enforcement in the penitentiary centers of the country, the purpose of which is the discovery of prohibited objects that are used during the violence [between prisoners] “, which have killed some 430 people since 2021.
“The measures we have taken, especially in the penitentiary system, have provoked violent reactions from criminal organizations that seek to intimidate the state,” President Guillermo Lasso said on the network. social X (formerly Twitter).
On Wednesday, hundreds of soldiers and police carried out a search operation for weapons, ammunition and explosives in another prison in the south of the country, in Latacunga. In addition, six Colombians with a heavy criminal past, imprisoned for the August 9 assassination of one of the favorites in the first round of the August 20 presidential election, had been transferred.
The simultaneous hostage-taking also took place after the explosion, on Thursday, of two car bombs in front of buildings belonging to the penitentiary administration in Quito, without causing any casualties. Twelve people, including one of Colombian nationality, were arrested for these facts, according to the authorities. An attempted mutiny also took place in a detention center for adolescents in the capital.
Wave of violence linked to drug trafficking
Once considered an island of peace in Latin America, Ecuador, located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest producers of cocaine, has been affected for several months by an unprecedented wave of violence linked to organized crime and drug trafficking.
Despite numerous police raids, cell searches, prisoner transfers, gangs and drug traffickers continue to impose their law and clash in prisons, where the state still appears powerless to take control of the situation.
Two gangs, Los Choneros and Los Lobos, known to work with the Mexican cartels, in particular took part in horrific massacres between prisoners who were members of rival gangs – victims burned alive or literally cut with knives.
On July 24, President Lasso declared a state of emergency throughout the country’s prison system for sixty days, a measure which notably allows the State to send the army to prisons. “(…) We are firm and we will not back down from our objective of capturing dangerous criminals, dismantling criminal gangs and pacifying the country’s prisons,” Mr. Lasso assured once again on Thursday.
Ecuador has thirty-six overcrowded prisons housing 32,200 inmates, half of them for drug trafficking.
