MADRID, 9 (EUROPE PRESS)
At least 43 people have died due to a riot registered this Monday morning in a prison in the Ecuadorian city of Santo Domingo, according to a new balance published by the Prosecutor’s Office. The Government has highlighted that 80 prisoners have been captured after the escape.
“After the riot at the CRS Bellavista in Santo Domingo, the Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office and the Ecuadorian Police raise evidence and receive versions on the spot. So far there are 43 deceased inmates (in development),” the Prosecutor’s Office has published on Twitter.
The Ecuadorian president, Guillermo Lasso, has sent his condolences to the relatives. “My deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those who died in the riot in the Santo Domingo prison. This is an unfortunate result of gang violence,” he posted on Twitter.
“The Minister of the Interior, Patricio Carrillo, is in charge of the operations to restore peace,” said the Ecuadorian president.
Dozens of relatives of the prisoners have traveled to the outside of the prison to get more information, pressured after learning of the spread on social networks of inmates murdered in corridors, reports the Ecuadorian newspaper ‘El Universo’.
The massacre occurred the day Fausto Salinas took office as the new commander of the National Police. Salinas himself explained that some 40 prisoners who tried to escape were arrested after the riot, although it was later reported that 80 were arrested.
The new commander of the Police has explained that the fight would be linked to the transfer of an inmate from the prison of La Roca de Guayaquil to that of Santo Domingo. “The presence of that person generates a struggle”, he has indicated.
This is the second massacre that has occurred in the last two months. In April, 20 inmates were killed in the Turi prison in a fight linked by the Police to a dispute between gangs.
The government of Guillermo Lasso has promised to reform the prison system, marked recurrently by incidents that even claim dozens of lives. Only last year some 300 inmates would have died, for which the Executive has proposed a series of initiatives, including a prison census.
