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Fifty-four reported dead in rioting at overcrowded Venezuelan prison
Fifty-four reported dead in rioting at overcrowded Venezuelan prison
(about 7 hours later)
Dozens are believed to have been killed during a bloody riot at a Venezuelan prison during which National Guard troops clashed with armed inmates.
A deadly clash between prison inmates and the Venezuelan National Guard has left 54 people dead and close to a hundred injured in one of the country's notoriously overcrowded jails.
Vice-president Nicolas Maduro called the violence tragic early Saturday and said the authorities had launched an investigation. He and other officials did not give a death toll from Friday's riot at Uribana prison in the central Venezuelan city of Barquisimeto.
The killings, which were sparked by an attempt to confiscate illegal weapons at Uribana prison, poses a major challenge for a government whose ailing leader, president Hugo Chávez has not been seen since he flew to Cuba six weeks ago for cancer surgery.
But the newspaper Ultimas Noticias reported on its website that 54 people were killed. The television channel Globovision reported at least 50 killed and about 90 injured. Both cited Ruy Medina, the director of Central Hospital in the city.
According to local media reports the search had been planned for 4am on Friday but the heavily-armed inmates resisted and engaged in a fierce gun battle with the armed soldiers.
Humberto Prado, an activist who leads the watchdog group Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, said in a statement that inmates' relatives and media accounts put the toll at 54 killed and 88 injured.
After two days of sporadic shooting and reports of killings by inmates, the authorities were still struggling on Saturday to gain full control of the facility in the western city of Barquisimeto.
Relatives wept outside the prison during the violence, and cried outside the morgue Saturday as they waited to identify bodies.
The director of the city's Central hospital, Dr. Ruy Medina, told news agency AFP that the facility had received close to 90 wounded men, all suffering from gun wounds.
Penitentiary Service Minister Iris Varela said Friday that the riot broke out when groups of inmates attacked National Guard troops who were attempting to carry out an inspection.
The death toll, which is expected to rise further, makes the conflict one of the deadliest riots the country has seen in the last decade.
Varela said the violence had affected a number of prisoners and officials, but said the authorities would hold off until control had been re-established at the prison to confirm the toll. She said the government decided to send troops to search the prison after receiving reports of clashes between groups of inmates during the past two days.
Television news bulletins showed relatives crowded outside the hospital and the prison in search of information.
The death toll provided by Medina rose late Friday after he had initially reported four killed and dozens injured. Ultimas Noticias reported that the victims included a Protestant pastor and a member of the National Guard, as well as inmates.
Iris Varela, Venezuela's penitentiary services minister, said the decision to search and disarm the men had been taken after authorities learned that rival gangs were preparing to confront each other in order to seize control of the facility.
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles condemned the government's handling of the country's overcrowded and violent prisons.
However, she said the element of surprise was lost because reporters gave advance warning of the weapons search.
"Our country's prisons are an example of the incapacity of this government and its leaders. They never solved the problem," Capriles said on his Twitter account. "How many more deaths do there have to be in the prisons for the government to acknowledge its failure and make changes?"
"This Friday we were surprised by the information announced in (private television channel) Globovision, social network sites and the web page of El Impulso newspaper," said Varela, who called the reports an "obvious trigger for violence."
Prado noted in his group's statement, which was posted on Globovision's website Saturday, that in 2007 the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights had ordered the Venezuelan government to seize weapons that inmates had in their possession at Uribana prison and to take measures to avoid deaths in the facility.
But civil rights activists said the inmates and their relatives had long anticipated the government's plan. The deeper problem, they said, was that authorities used a disproportionate amount of force in a prison that was already at breaking point.
The observatory called for the government to release a list with the names of the dead and wounded, as well as details about weapons seized in the search.
Venezuela's jail system is among the most violent and overcrowded in the world. Originally built for 12,000 inmates, the country's 33 penitentiaries across house 47,000 people. Guards are notable by their absence, leaving gang bosses free to run lucrative drug dealing operations from their cells.
It also said the government should adequately train security forces to "effectively guarantee the right to life and avoid the disproportionate use of force."
Guns and knives are widespread, as is murder. In 2011, non governmental groups and human rights watchdogs reported 560 people were killed in prison.
The group says Uribana prison was built to hold up to 850 inmates but currently has about 1,400.
Uribana - one of the worst - is known for the weekly "coliseum" contests, where inmates fight scheduled battles as crowds of convicts cheer, jeer and film the bloodshed.
It was the latest in a series of bloody riots in the country's prisons. In April and May, a prison uprising in La Planta prison in Caracas blocked authorities from going inside for nearly three weeks. One prisoner was killed and five people were wounded, including two National Guard soldiers and three inmates.
There have been riots in the past, but the botched disarmament operation comes as a politically sensitive time with Chávez out of the country and in uncertain health.
Two months later, another riot broke out at a prison in Merida, and the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory reported 30 killed.
His stand-in, vice president Nicolas Maduro, was greeted with the news on his return from Chávez's bedside in Havana. He insisted the operation was an important step forward.
In August, 25 people were killed and 43 wounded when two groups of inmates fought a gunbattle inside Yare I prison south of Caracas.
"This (disarment) plan has been carried out with patience so that jails are freed from the violence, the mafias, drugs and deaths that have plagued them for a long time", Maduro told the state channel, VTV.
In recent years, violence has worsened inside Venezuela's severely overcrowded prisons, where inmates often freely obtain weapons and drugs with the help of corrupt guards.
Venezuela currently has 33 prisons built to hold about 12,000 inmates, but officials have said the prisons' population is about 47,000.
Maduro said early Saturday that Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega Diaz and National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello were leading the investigation into the newest riot.
"The prisons have to be governed by law," Maduro said.
Chavez's government has previous pledged improvements to the prison system, but opponents and activists say the government hasn't made progress.
