Bloody weekend in prisons in Honduras: 36 dead in two massacres

At least 36 people were killed this weekend in clashes in Honduran prisons, over which the military and police are trying to regain control after a spate of murders linked to "maras", the criminal gangs that plague the country.

At least 18 people died on Sunday afternoon during a clash between detainees in a prison in the center of this small Central American state.

Clashes "with a gun, knife and machete", which also left two wounded, broke out in El Porvenir prison, 60 km north of the capital Tegucigalpa, local media said Second Lieutenant José Coello, who released the list of victims.

In the night of Friday to Saturday, another shooting had also left 18 dead, as well as 16 wounded, in the prison of the port city of Tela, 200 km northwest of Tegucigalpa.

These two massacres occurred shortly after Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, citing the need to stem a wave of prison killings, on December 17 ordered police and the military to take full control of the country's prisons. countries, where more than 21,000 detainees are piled up. Some 1,200 police and military personnel are to be deployed in 18 of the country's 27 prisons. Honduras has just under 10 million inhabitants.

Brother of the president

The presidential decision was taken three days after the assassination of five members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang (MS-13) by a fellow prisoner from La Tolva high security prison, about 40 kilometers east of Tegucigalpa .

The day before, Pedro Idelfonso Armas, the director of the country's main high security prison in El Pozo I, in Santa Barbara (west), had been shot dead.

Armas had been suspended shortly before for the purpose of investigating his presence during the assassination by detainees of Magdaleno Meza, a drug trafficker whose confessions and note books had allowed him to accuse the brother of Honduran president, Juan Antonio "Tony" Hernandez. The latter was found guilty of drug trafficking by a New York court. He faces a life sentence in January.

President Hernandez denounced the charge against his younger brother, saying it was based on "the testimony of avowed assassins".

According to a video that circulated on social networks, the prison director was talking to Magdaleno Meza when guards opened fire, causing confusion that allowed a dozen inmates to shoot the drug trafficker at point-blank range.

Crime academies

Magdaleno Meza's lawyer Carlos Chajtur accused AFP of the government of having ordered the assassination of his client in retaliation for his collaboration with the American justice system in the trial against the president's brother.

José Luis Pinto, a lawyer who had represented Magdaleno Meza and other members of the Valle Valle brothers' drug cartel, extradited to the United States, was assassinated on December 9. The 38-year-old lawyer was shot dead in a cafeteria in Copan, some 200 km northwest of Tegucigalpa.

Heads of the specialized army and police against organized crime said on Sunday that gangs unleashed this wave of violence in prisons in order to "prevent the necessary takeover of the country's penitentiary centers" "academies of crime".

In February 2012, 362 detainees died in the fire at their prison in Comayagua (central Honduras). Two other fires in prison centers left 107 dead in April 2014 in San Pedro Sula (north), and 68 victims in June 2008, near the port of La Ceiba (Caribbean coast).

Honduras remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world with a rate of 40 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018, after a record 86.5 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011, almost nine times the world average.