Gang-Related Prison Riot Kills 41 Women — Authorities KNEW And Did Nothing
For weeks, inmates had been complaining about threats from a local gang
A gang in Hondouras removed the the guards (who were uninjured) before raining havoc on a prison. When the dust had cleared, 41 women were dead. Victims were burned, stabbed, or shot.
President Xiomara Castro said Tuesday’s riot at the prison in the town of Tamara, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of Honduras’ capital, was “planned by maras (street gangs) with the knowledge and acquiescence of security authorities.”
Castro pledged to take “drastic measures,” but did not explain how inmates identified as members of the Barrio 18 gang were able to get guns and machetes into the prison, or move freely into an adjoining cell block and slaughter all the prisoners there.
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Video clips presented by the government from inside the prison showed several pistols and a heap of machetes and other bladed weapons that were found after the riot.
Sandra Rodríguez Vargas, the assistant commissioner for Honduras’ prison system, said the attackers “removed” guards at the facility — none appeared to have been injured — around 8 a.m. Tuesday and then opened the gates to an adjoining cell block and began massacring women there. They started a fire that left cell walls blacked and bunks reduced to twisted heaps of metal.
Twenty-six of the victims were burned to death and the remainder shot or stabbed, said Yuri Mora, the spokesman for Honduras’ national police investigation agency. At least seven inmates were being treated at a Tegucigalpa hospital. — Time
As for the motive behind such a slaughter, we have a couple of clues.
1) A friend or relative of an inmate from that cell block was told that Barrio 18 was issuing threats and demanding that someone hand over a relative.
2) While such prisons are often under defacto control by one gang interest or another, this might also have come in response to prison authorities trying to crack down on organized crime within the walls of the prison.
If anyone is wondering why it’s so important to protect the ‘Rule Of Law’? This story is a stark reminder.
It’s not just some philosophical abstraction or a political ideal. Without a rule of law that applies equally to all of us … THIS is the kind of might-makes-right society we eventually end up with.
Source Cited:
Time
