QUITO (Reuters) -Ecuador has moved 300 high-risk inmates to a new maximum-security prison on the country’s coast, President Daniel Noboa said on Monday, a day after 31 prisoners were killed in a riot in the south.
The transfer to the Encuentro Prison in Santa Elena province is part of Noboa’s plan to weaken criminal gangs that operate inside Ecuador’s overcrowded jails, where hundreds of inmates have died in clashes in recent years.
“The first 300 most dangerous inmates have already been transferred to the Encuentro Prison,” Noboa said on X, sharing photos of prisoners sitting on the floor, dressed in orange uniforms with shaved heads, surrounded by soldiers.
“Crime wanted to challenge Ecuador and start its campaign. Today, Ecuador responded with action.”
The new facility has capacity for more than 700 people. Ecuador’s prison system is currently 30% over capacity, according to the national prison agency SNAI.
Interior Minister John Reimberg earlier on Monday said Sunday’s violence broke out after inmates learned they were going to be transferred. It also came just days before a national referendum in which Noboa is seeking voter approval for foreign military bases on Ecuadorean soil and to convene an assembly to rewrite the constitution.
“The party’s over for them, the orders from the prisons… to generate violence and chaos are over,” Reimberg told a radio station. “Today they are in cells designed to prevent them from having any contact or communication with absolutely anyone.”
At least 31 inmates died on Sunday at the Machala prison, in southwestern Ecuador, in a clash between the Los Lobos and Sao Box gangs, the latter a splinter group of the former vying for control of the prison. Of the victims, 27 were suffocated by their rivals, according to government data.
During frequent operations in Ecuador’s 36 prisons, authorities have seized firearms, ammunition, cell phones, fighting roosters, and even pigs.
(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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