Honduras’ military took charge of the country’s dangerous jails on Monday, following a gang conflict that killed 46 inmates in a women’s detention center last week, according to officials.
Leftist President Xiomara Castro stated last week that she will transfer over authority of the jail system to the military police, reversing a previous policy of demilitarizing security as her administration works to combat organized crime within prisons.
Hundreds of shirtless male detainees, many tattooed and with their hair shaved, were arranged on the floor of Honduras’ high-security Tamara jail with their arms above their heads, surrounded by highly armed troops, according to official footage.
The photographs are identical to those released earlier this year by neighboring right-wing El Salvador’s government, which has increased jail security and imprisoned some 62,000 accused criminals as part of a gang crackdown.
“Our mission is to defeat organized crime inside prisons, and we are (also) going after intellectual authors operating from the outside,” Defense Minister Jose Manuel Zelaya stated in a tweet.
Tamara, where 4,200 convicts are crowded into a facility with a capacity of 2,500, is one of two jails, along with La Tolva, that military police took charge of on Monday, according to Armed Forces spokesperson Antonio Coello.
In Honduras, about 20,000 convicts dwell in 26 overcrowded jails, according to a United Nations assessment, with the country’s prisons being 34.2% over capacity.
Colonel Fernando Munoz informed reporters on Monday that military police confiscated firearms, machine guns, ammo, magazines, and grenades from an area of the Tamara jail inhabited by the Barrio 18 gang.
“The corruption in prisons has ended.” “We’re going to control it, and there will be no calls coming out of here ordering extortions or executions,” the officer added during a news conference./Reuters
