31 die in Guatemala prison riots

Explosions at a makeshift prison for gang members launched near-simultaneous attacks at seven lockups across Guatemala, killing 31 people and displaying the organisational power of Central America’s gangs.

Officials said 31 inmates died in the riots, which Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann said appeared to be co-ordinated attacks by the Mara Salvatrucha gang against a rival gang, MS-18.

Eighteen people died within about 45 minutes at El Hoyon, a police barracks-turned-prison for about 400 alleged gang members in downtown Escuintla, a provincial capital some 30 miles south of Guatemala City.

Three others were reported killed at the Canada Prison Farm 12 miles further south and Vielmann said eight died in rioting at Guatemala’s top-security Pavon prison, about 15 miles east of the capital. Two more were stabbed to death at a prison in Mazatenango, 85 miles south-west of the capital, according to officials.

Vielmann said smaller disturbances were quashed at three other prisons.

At El Hoyon, the sound of explosions caused nearby shopkeepers to slam down metal shutters and brought hysteria to the mothers of inmates who had gathered for the prison’s visitors’ day.

Police kept reporters, rescue workers and human rights monitors away from the prison until the gunfire faded. Then they began bringing out the wounded – a process that lasted nearly three hours and which filled the two main local hospitals.

Then came the dead – 18 bodies carried to the small local morgue as police held back relatives who embraced one another and wept.

El Hoyon holds 400 alleged gang members. It was opened at an old police barracks after a December 2002 gang riot at another prison in which 14 inmates died.

Vielmann said yesterday’s attacks showed the co-ordinating power of the gangs who have spread terror throughout much of the region, prompting harsh official crackdowns.

“The gangs maintain constant communication,” he said. “They have a Web page and not only synchronise in Guatemala, they synchronise with El Salvador, Honduras and with the US.”

He said mobile phones and messages passed by prison visitors helped maintain contact among the gang members. Vilemann also blamed visitors for slipping guns to inmates – something he said would be a problem until new, higher-security prisons were built.

Human Rights Prosecutor Sergio Morales told reporters there was evidence that some police, too, had given guns to inmates at El Hoyon.

Law enforcement officials say the gangs emerged in Los Angeles and later spread to Central America when criminal migrants were deported back home.

A region-wide campaign against the gangs has put thousands of the tattooed “maras” behind bars, leading to prison feuds between rival gangs.

A May 2004 fire killed 107 inmates, most of them Mara Salvatrucha members, in Honduras. That came 13 months after suspected gang members were locked in their cells, doused with gasoline and set ablaze at the El Porvenir prison farm near the Honduran city of La Ceiba. Nearly 70 people, including prisoners, visitors and guards, were killed.

Rioting has also rocked several prisons in El Salvador over the past two years.