Prisoners beheaded and dismembered in prisons in Ecuador over leadership dispute between criminal organizations | Security | News

February 24, 2021 – 09:26 a.m.

With chainsaws and other tools, inmates at the Turi Rehabilitation Center in Cuenca opened the doors of the special department for maximum security on Tuesday and murdered more than 30 people who had been deprived of their freedom. The official information took a long time, but the information provided by relatives of witnesses and versions of police officers and guides, as well as videos the inmates themselves circulated and went viral, flowed.

Some of these cell phone images (which are prohibited in prisons) show bodies cut to pieces. In one of them, dozens of prisoners surround a few who take a decapitated head and kick it, euphoric and angry. One of them stabs viciously in the human part; others beat her with clubs; they drive it down. Stick out his eyes! One shouts; another uses a kind of dagger to skin the hair. Cruelty and anger.

What happened this Tuesday, from 8 a.m., in the prison on the outskirts of Cuenca and that tears the soul of those who watch it, was only part of a violent and criminal day that took place in three prisons in the country: Guayaquil, Cuenca and Latacunga. The National Service for Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI) reported 34 victims in Turi, 8 in Cotopaxi, 31 in the regional prison and 6 in Guayaquil Penitentiary, with a macabre and painful total of 79 dead. A record number in one day in prisons.

The government minister, Patricio Pazmiño, said these events were “coordinated action by criminal organizations” to cause violence in prisons.

A Turi prison official pointed out in statements to the press that despite calling the police and asking for the electricity to be turned off, because the inmates used tools to open the pavilion gates, the attackers were advancing. and slaughter in that compound.

In one of the videos a kind of victory cry is heard The wolves, allies of The Choneros in recent months they have fought with Los Lagartos in prisons and on the streets of the country.

But this time the war is, according to guides and preliminary police reports, It was given by the leadership of the Los Choneros narcocriminal gang, whose boss, Jorge Luis Zambrano, aka Rasquiña The JL, was murdered in the style of hitmen in a shopping center in Manta, Manabí, on December 28, 2020.

SNAI’s director, Edmundo Moncayo, confirmed on Tuesday afternoon in Quito that the massacre was due to the dispute over the leadership of the Los Choneros gang, in addition to the intervention of Los Lagartos, Los Lobos, Tiguerones, Los Pipos and Chonekillers. At that appointment he spoke about 62 deceased people, but that number has risen to 79 in recent hours.

According to Moncayo, it is hypothesized that another criminal organization has emerged seeking to retake leadership of aliases Rasquiña, and that the response to this fact has been delayed, but it took place on Tuesday, July 23. “We have enough premises to support the hypothesis we are talking about,” he said.

The director said there are two groups trying to find guidance in the detention centers, and that about 800 police officers have mobilized to check order.

That dispute emerges from a police report consulted by this newspaper about what happened in Guayaquil. At Guayas Male Deprivation of Liberty Center No. 4, medium security stage, several PPLs (persons deprived of liberty) of wings 7 and 8 led by aliases price Y Nike and wings 9 and 10 guided by aliases Which Pope Y To my, belonging to the Los Choneros criminal organization, would attempt to undermine the integrity of the PPL alias Cuyuyui, belonging to the Los Choneros criminal organization. Fact that would arise from the power struggle to take control of the activities, ”that document quotes.

On Monday, police seized two firearms in the Guayas region; It is known from the preliminary investigation that they would victimize the leaders of the criminal organizations located in the maximum security pavilionOrganizations such as the Lobos, Chonekillers, Tiguerones and others are also responding to international organizations and using artisanal weapons.

In Cuenca relatives of the prisoners gave other names. Juan, who still did not know if his relative was dead or injured, said on Tuesday afternoon that the dispute lately has been not only between these Choneros and Lagartos, but also other ex-Choneros who now call themselves Sinaloa and some identified more as Quevedeños. . According to Juan, this is all caused by aliases Cap Y Junior, leaders of Los Choneros in Turi, apparently had problems among themselves because of money problems.

The figure of 79 dead exceeds that of the entire year 2020, when 51 crimes were recorded in the Ecuadorian prison system. (I)