Ecuador: government regains control of Guayaquil prison

Soldiers control the entrances to the prison in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on November 16, 2021. AFP - FERNANDO MENDEZ

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

Thanks to the massive intervention of the military and police, the Ecuadorian government has temporarily regained control of the country's largest prison, in the city of Guayaquil, in southwest Ecuador, after the violent clashes last week. .

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With our correspondent in Quito

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It took more than a thousand heavily armed police and military personnel to restore state authority to the 8,500 inmates of Guayaquil prison, where prison overcrowding is 60%.

At first, the police remained outside the pavilions where nearly 70 detainees were massacred, dismembered and beheaded last Friday and Saturday during clashes described as " 

 " by the government.

Police and military have taken over the towers rival drug gangs had set up on prison rooftops to watch over each other.

► To read also: Ecuador: new bloody clashes in a prison in Guayaquil, dozens of dead

Supported by light armored vehicles, the soldiers finally entered the prison pavilions where they encountered no resistance despite the massive presence of bladed weapons, rifles, pistols and explosives.

All prison guards were suspended on suspicion of tolerating arms and drug trafficking, either because they accepted bribes or because they and their families were threatened. .

This new crisis has in any case caused the resignation of the main military authorities of the country as well as of the head of the penitentiary system, Colonel Bolivar Garzon, appointed less than two months ago after the massacre at the time of 120 prisoners.

► To read also: Ecuador: the president promises, again, to regain control of the prisons

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