|
Guatemala gangs blame guards for weapons
(AP)
Updated: 2005-08-17 09:24
Members of a violent Central American gang on Tuesday claimed they routinely
pay prison guards to provide them with weapons, and they blamed a rival group
for starting coordinated riots at seven prisons that left 31 inmates dead,
reported AP.
Interviewed as they recovered from gunshot and stab wounds, members of the
Mara 18 blamed Monday's near-simultaneous uprisings at Guatemalan prisons on the
rival Mara Salvatrucha gang. Gangs are known as "maras" in Central America.
Herman Ivan Aguirra, 19, a two-year member of the Mara 18 gang from Guatemala
City, said he and other prisoners were exercising when Mara Salvatrucha members
seemingly came out of nowhere wielding knives, guns and grenades.
"They hit me hard," Aguirra said. "There was blood everywhere, people dying,
people screaming."
Monday's violence began with two grenade explosions at a prison for gang
members known as El Hoyon in Escuintla, officials said.
Relatives of prisoners who died during a
prison riot at the Pavon Prison on Monday look for information at the
morgue in Guatemala City, Tuesday, Aug. 16,
2005.[AP] | It was followed by coordinated attacks by Mara Salvatrucha gang members
against the Mara 18 gang at six other prisons, they said. Most of the injured
belonged to Mara 18, according to local media.
Mara 18 gang members recovering at the Escuintla Hospital said the two gangs
are always fighting each other and that guards help them by providing them with
weapons in exchange for bribes.
"(The guards) are very easy to buy," said 24-year-old Ismael Lopez, one of at
least 26 gang members stabbed, shot or beaten at three prisons in Escuintla, a
provincial capital 30 miles south of Guatemala City.
Officials did not respond immediately to the allegations. Interior Minister
Carlos Vielmann said earlier Tuesday that prison visitors smuggled in guns and
passed along messages to inmates in other facilities, while some of the
prisoners used cell phones to help launch the riots.
Vielmann said Monday's attacks showed the organizational power of the gangs,
which 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 synchronize in Guatemala, they synchronize with El Salvador,
Honduras and with the United States."
More than a dozen police officers kept watch over the 15 prisoners who
remained on the Escuintla Hospital's second floor Tuesday. Some of the gang
members were handcuffed to their gurneys and shouted obscenities at visitors.
At a morgue in Escuintla, families arrived Tuesday to identify the bodies of
dead inmates.
"There is no security anywhere. Not even prisoners are safe," said Ingrid
Hernandez, who said police told her that her son, 19-year-old Eswin Rolando
Hernandez, had been fatally stabbed and shot.
"This is a war and the gang members are winning," said Rolando Gamez, 41, who
was trying to determine whether his 17-year-old son, Gerardo Gamez, was among
the victims.
Raquel Barahona, 24, began to sob violently and rocked back and forth on a
concrete stoop outside the morgue after seeing her 20-year-old cousin Josue
Magana, identified as one of the victims in an afternoon newspaper.
"Supposedly there is no death penalty (in Guatemala) but a lot of them were
killed" in Monday's violence, she said.
Those killed included 18 inmates at El Hoyon prison, a former police barracks
in Escuintla that at the time of the riots housed about 400 alleged gang
members.
Three prisoners died at the Canada Prison Farm, 12 miles south of El Hoyon.
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 southwest
of the capital, and smaller disturbances were put down at three other prisons,
Vielmann said.
Law enforcement officials say the gangs emerged in Los Angeles and later
spread to Central America when criminal migrants were deported back home.
Aguirra and others said violence is simply a way of life for the gangs. He
belongs, he said because "I like the crazy life."
|
 | | | Japanese PM launches general election campaign | | |  | | | Katrina slams US Gulf Coast, oil rigs adrift | | |  | | | Japan's 6 parties square off in TV debate | | |
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
Today's
Top News |
|
|
|
Top World
News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
