Bloody weekend in Honduras. At least 36 people were killed on Saturday, December 22 and Sunday, December 23, in clashes in Honduran prisons. Prisons over which the army and the police are trying to regain control after a wave of assassinations linked to the "maras", the criminal gangs that plague the country.
At least 18 people died on Sunday afternoon during a conflict between detainees in a prison in the center of this small Central American state.
The clashes "with a gun, knife and machete", which also left two injured, erupted in the prison of El Porvenir, 60 km north of the capital Tegucigalpa, according to the second lieutenant José Coello, who released the list of victims.
In the night of Friday to Saturday, another shooting had also left 18 dead, as well as 16 wounded, in the prison of the port city of Tela, 200 km northwest of Tegucigalpa.
These massacres occurred shortly after Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez raised the need to stem a wave of prison killings and ordered police and the military on December 17 to regain control of prisons. To do this, some 1,200 police and military personnel must be deployed in 18 of the country's 27 prisons, where more than 21,000 detainees are crammed. Honduras has just under 10 million inhabitants.
Brother of the president
The presidential decision was taken three days after the assassination of five members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang (MS-13) by a fellow prisoner from the high-security prison in La Tolva (east of the capital).
The day before, the director of the main high security prison in the country of El Pozo I, in Santa Barbara (west), who had been shot dead.
The latter had been suspended shortly before for the purpose of an investigation into his presence during the assassination by detainees of Magdaleno Meza, a drug trafficker whose confessions and note books had allowed to accuse the president's brother Honduran, Juan Antonio "Tony" Hernandez. The latter was found guilty of drug trafficking by a New York court. He faces a life sentence in January.
President Hernandez denounced the charge against his younger brother, saying it was based on "the testimony of avowed assassins".
"Crime academies"
The lawyer for Magdaleno Meza accused the government of having ordered the assassination of his client in retaliation for his collaboration with the American justice in the lawsuit against the brother of the president.
José Luis Pinto, a lawyer who had represented the drug dealer and other members of the Valle Valle brothers' cartel, extradited to the United States, was assassinated on December 9. The 38-year-old poultry was slaughtered in a cafeteria in Copan, 200 km northwest of Tegucigalpa.
According to the heads of the specialized army and police against organized crime, the gangs unleashed this wave of violence in prisons in order to "prevent the necessary takeover of the penitentiary centers of the country", qualified "d 'crime academies'.
In February 2012, the fire in Comayagua prison (central Honduras) killed 362 detainees. Two other fires in prison centers left 107 dead in April 2014 in San Pedro Sula (north), and 68 victims in June 2008, near the port of La Ceiba (Caribbean coast).
With a rate of 40 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018, Honduras remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world. In 2011, its record stood at 86.5 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, almost nine times the world average.
With AFP
Newsletter Don't miss anything from international news
Don't miss anything from international newssubscribe
google-play-badge_FR