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A30 world news
Diabierna 1 OctOber 2021

Ecuador declares prison emergency after 116 killed in riot

and sad.” He also said he could not lowing deadly prison riots last Febru- said.
guarantee that authorities had re- ary.
gained control of the lockup. Ecuador’s president said that care
Earlier, officials said the violence points had been set up for relatives of
“It is regrettable that the prisons are erupted from a dispute between the the inmates with food and psycholog-
being turned into territories for pow- “Los Lobos” and “Los Choneros” ical support. He added that a $24 mil-
er disputes by criminal gangs,” he prison gangs. lion program to address the country’s
said, adding that he would act with prisons will be accelerated, starting
“absolute firmness” to regain con- Col. Mario Pazmiño, the former di- with investments in infrastructure
trol of the Litoral prison and prevent rector of Ecuador’s military intelli- and technology in the Litoral prison.
the violence from spreading to other gence, said the bloody fighting shows
penitentiaries. that “transnational organized crime The former director of Ecuador’s
has permeated the structure” of Ec- prison bureau, Fausto Cobo, said that
(AP) — Ecuador’s president has Images circulating on social media uador’s prisons, adding that Mexico’s inside penitentiaries authorities face a
declared a state of emergency showed dozens of bodies in the pris- Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation “threat with power equal to or great-
in the prison system following a on’s Pavilions 9 and 10 and scenes that cartels operate through local gangs. er than the state itself.” He said that
battle among gang members in a looked like battlefields. The fighting while security forces must enter pris-
coastal lockup that killed at least was with firearms, knives and bombs, “They want to sow fear,” he told The ons with shields and unarmed, they
116 people and injured 80 in what officials said. Earlier, regional police Associated Press on Wednesday, urg- are met by inmates with high-caliber
authorities say was the worst pris- commander Fausto Buenaño had said ing the government to temporarily weapons.
on bloodbath ever in the country. that bodies were being found in the cede control of the prisons to the Na-
prison’s pipelines. tional Police. “The more radical and In July, the president decreed an-
Officials said at least five of the dead violent the way they murder,” the other state of emergency in Ecua-
were found to have been beheaded. Outside the prison morgue, the rela- more they achieve their goal of con- dor’s prison system following several
tives of inmates wept, with some de- trol, he added. violent episodes that resulted in more
President Guillermo Lasso decreed a scribing to reporters the cruelty with than 100 inmates being killed. Those
state of emergency Wednesday, which which their loved ones were decapi- Luis Hernández, an analyst on po- deaths occurred in various prisons
will give the government powers that tated and dismembered. litical and military affairs who was a and not in a single facility like Tues-
include deploying police and soldiers general in Ecuador’s army, said im- day’s massacre.
inside prisons. The order came a day “In the history of the country, there prisoned gang members extend their
after bloodshed at the Litoral peni- has not been an incident similar or control from prisons to the streets, Previously, the bloodiest day occurred
tentiary in Guayaquil that officials close to this one,” said Ledy Zúñiga, managing debts, deliveries and other in February, when 79 prisoners died
blamed on gangs linked to interna- the former president of Ecuador’s aspects of the illegal drug trade. in simultaneous riots in three pris-
tional drug cartels fighting for control National Rehabilitation Council. ons in the country. In July, 22 more
of the facility. Ecuador is a key transit point for drug prisoners lost their lives in the Lito-
Zúñiga, who was also the country’s trafficking organizations because of ral penitentiary, while in September
Lasso, visibly moved by the carnage, minister of justice in 2016, said she its good road infrastructure, three a penitentiary center was attacked by
said at a news conference that what regretted that steps had not been tak- international maritime ports and two drones leaving no fatalities.
had happened in the prison was “bad en to prevent another massacre fol- international airports, Hernández

Former Nazi camp secretary, 96, caught after skipping trial

(AP) — A former secre- woman’s age and condition, German media identified her midst of SS men who were
tary for the SS command- she had not been expected as Irmgard Furchner. experienced in violence — From mid-1944, tens of
er of the Stutthof concen- “actively to evade the trial,” however, does that mean she thousands of Jews from ghet-
tration camp skipped the Milhoffer added. Efraim Zuroff, the head Nazi shared their state of knowl- tos in the Baltics and from
start Thursday of her trial hunter at the Simon Wiesen- edge? That is not necessar- Auschwitz filled the camp,
in Germany on more than Police found the defendant thal Center’s office in Jeru- ily obvious,” lawyer Wolf along with thousands of Pol-
11,000 counts of accessory and she was brought to the salem, told The Associated Molkentin said. ish civilians swept up in the
to murder. She was picked court on Thursday after- Press that “if she is healthy brutal Nazi suppression of
up several hours later and noon. A court statement said enough to flee, she is healthy According to other media the Warsaw uprising.
ordered held in custody. that she was being taken to a enough to be incarcerated.” reports, Furchner was ques-
detention center. tioned as a witness during Others incarcerated there in-
The 96-year-old woman left Her flight, he added, “should past Nazi trials and said at the cluded political prisoners, ac-
her home near Hamburg in Prosecutors argue that the also affect the punishment.” time that the former SS com- cused criminals, people sus-
a taxi on Thursday morning, woman was part of the appa- mandant of Stutthof, Paul pected of homosexual activity
a few hours before proceed- ratus that helped the Nazi’s The case against Furchner Werner Hoppe, dictated daily and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
ings were due to start at the Stutthof camp function dur- relies on German legal prec- letters and radio messages to
state court in Itzehoe, court ing World War II more than edent established in cases her. More than 60,000 people
spokeswoman Frederike 75 years ago. over the past decade that were killed there by being
Milhoffer said. anyone who helped Nazi Furchner testified she was given lethal injections of
The court said in a statement death camps and concentra- not aware of the killings that gasoline or phenol directly to
The court issued an arrest before the trial that the de- tion camps function can be occurred at the camp while their hearts, or being shot or
warrant and delayed the read- fendant allegedly “aided and prosecuted as an accessory she worked there, dpa re- starved. Others were forced
ing of the indictment until abetted those in charge of the to the murders committed ported. outside in winter without
the next scheduled hear- camp in the systematic kill- there, even without evidence clothing until they died of
ing on Oct. 19 because that ing of those imprisoned there of participation in a specific Initially a collection point exposure, or were put to
couldn’t be done in the de- between June 1943 and April crime. for Jews and non-Jewish death in a gas chamber.
fendant’s absence. 1945 in her function as a ste- Poles removed from Dan-
nographer and typist in the A defense lawyer told Der zig — now the Polish city
The accused woman previ- camp commandant’s office.” Spiegel magazine that the tri- of Gdansk — Stutthof from
ously had “announced that al would center on whether about 1940 was used as a
she didn’t want to come” to Despite her advanced age, the 96-year-old had knowl- so-called “work education
court, but that did not pro- the German woman was to edge of the atrocities that camp” where forced laborers,
vide sufficient grounds for be tried in juvenile court be- happened at the camp. primarily Polish and Soviet
detaining her ahead of the tri- cause she was under 21 at the citizens, were sent to serve
al, Milhoffer said. Given the time of the alleged crimes. “My client worked in the sentences and often died.