At least 15 prisoners died Monday in recent unrest in Ecuador’s prison system, officials in the South American country reported.
The agency that manages Ecuador’s prisons, SNAI, gave the death toll in a statement, which also said 21 people were injured in the clashes between inmates.
It previously announced that tactical units were conducting operations to regain control of the facility in the Ecuadorian city of Latacunga.
The prison houses around 4,300 prisoners and is one of the largest in the country.
Violence in Ecuador’s prisons, where drug gangs struggle for power, is often perpetrated with knives and sometimes includes beheadings. The violence has claimed the lives of more than 400 prisoners since February 2021.
On Monday, inmates climbed onto roofs while detonations were heard, according to TV news.
Jorge Flores, deputy director of SNAI, told reporters that Leandro Norero was apparently “among the victims”.
Norero, who was suspected of links to drug trafficking, became one of the inmate leaders.
Known by the alias “El Patron,” he was arrested last May on money laundering charges in an operation that allegedly seized $6.4 million, 24 bars of gold, firearms and ammunition.
“Regarding the death of the defendant #LeandroN., #FiscaliaEc reports that after the appropriate identification, experts will be able to confirm his death or not,” the country’s prosecutor’s office said.
Tactical units of the military and police were working to regain control of the prison, SNAI said, in what provincial authorities described as a successful operation.
“Control has been regained,” Cotopaxi provincial governor Oswaldo Coronel announced in the evening.
– “torture centers” –
According to official estimates, the country’s overcrowded prisons hold about 35,000 inmates, many of them members of drug-trafficking gangs.
A government committee noted in April that Ecuadorian prisons “are viewed as warehouses for people and centers of torture.”
Bordering Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest producers of cocaine, Ecuador serves as a port of entry for drug shipments, mainly to the United States and Europe.
In 2021, Ecuador seized a record 210 tons of drugs, mostly cocaine.
Last year, the country of 17.7 million people had a homicide rate of 14 per 100,000, almost double the 2020 level.
To improve living conditions in Ecuador’s prisons, President Guillermo Lasso launched an inmate census in August.
During a television interview on Monday, he sent “a message of condolences and solidarity to the families of those who died in (prison) today.”
