TEGUCIGALPA.— In a strategy similar to the one followed by the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, yesterday the Honduran government released images of the transfer of suspected gang members to new prisons.
The Central American country undertook an operation in order to “pacify the prisons,” reported the Public Order Military Police (PMOP).
In the simultaneous operations, the PMOP transferred 1,628 members of maras and gangs, according to a statement from the military police institution.
This is part of the actions commissioned by President Xiomara Castro to take control of 25 prisons, where there are about 20,000 inmates.
The PMOP released videos of the moment in which the military police from the prisons take the gang members out of the jails with their hands on their heads, then put them in a convoy of olive green trucks.
The operation has the purpose of retaking control of the penitentiary centers, in which acts of violence had been reported,” said the police.
The operations began on June 26, a week after inmates from the Barrio 18 gang in a women’s prison located in the Támara area, north of Tegucigalpa, left their cell and broke into the one where the gang’s rivals were. MS-13.
They attacked them with shots and set fire to the center with a balance of 46 deaths.
In the last 20 years, more than a thousand deaths have been recorded in Honduran prisons, according to the state Human Rights Commissioner.
It was probably a reaction to the government’s crackdown on corruption inside prisons in recent months, said Julissa Villanueva, director of the prison system.
Following that incident, the government announced “drastic measures” to counteract the situation in the prisons.
The worst tragedy occurred in Comayagua, in the center of the country, where 362 people perished in a fire in 2012.
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