Two hundred escaped detainees were “recaptured” on Tuesday by the security forces, the day after a massive escape from a prison in northern Equateur. The latter had occurred in favor of a deadly riot.
According to the latest official report, at least 44 prisoners died in clashes between two rival gangs on Monday in Bellavista prison, in the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas, about 80 km west of Quito. The number of detainees who escaped was not specified by the police. She had reported Monday evening of 112 “recaptured” detainees and 108 others still in the wild.
A “butcher shop” inside the prison
This Tuesday, desperate and in tears, dozens of parents and relatives of prisoners were still waiting outside Bellavista prison awaiting news of their loved ones. Soldiers and soldiers were deployed in and around the establishment. “They don’t give us any information. They say young men have escaped to save their lives, others are going to be transferred,” Leisi Zambrano said, with no news from her brother.
As soon as she heard about the clashes, this 48-year-old woman explains that she ran to the prison in the early hours of the morning, with other family members. “We heard the prisoners calling for help, that we don’t let them die”, she says, commenting: “It’s a butcher’s shop inside”.
Horrifying videos are circulating on social media showing a pile of bloody, naked and mutilated bodies on the hemoglobin-covered floor of a common room. Or even corpses strewing the corridors of the prison, next to mattresses that the attackers probably tried to set on fire.
Merciless war between rival gangs
According to Interior Minister Patricio Carrillo, members of the “Lobos” (“The Wolves”) gang “attacked” members of the rival “R7” faction with knives. In an attempt to stem the violence, six leaders of these gangs have since been transferred by helicopter from Bellavista to two high-security prisons elsewhere in the country.
With a capacity of 1,200 places, the Bellavista prison accommodates 1,700 prisoners, and is a reflection of the prison overcrowding in all the prisons of Ecuador. “These disturbing incidents once again underline the urgent need for a comprehensive reform of the criminal justice system,” commented the spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned the violence and called for a “rapid, serious and impartial” investigation.
Clashes, often extremely violent, are recurrent in Ecuadorian prisons, where nearly 400 detainees have died since February 2021, including these latest clashes. According to the government, rival gangs of drug traffickers, infiltrated or controlled by Mexican cartels, are waging an all-out war for control of overcrowded prisons, a war that authorities have so far been powerless to stem.