Honduras military takes over prisons.
The Honduran armed forces have taken control of the nation’s troubled prison system a week after a gang riot left 46 women dead.
The military police conducted sweeps at jails it took over in the cities of Támara and La Tolva on Monday and removed hundreds of prisoners from their cells, leading them to the courtyards.
Footage released by the government showed male detainees sitting on the ground half naked with their hands over the heads and necks at the Francisco Morazan National Penitentiary.
Inmates at the Women’s Center for Social Adaptation, a women’s-only prison, the lone one in the Central American nation, were also forced out of their cells and sat in the yards with their hands across their necks, but the female military cops permitted them to keep their shirts on.
The images were reminiscent of El Salvador’s crackdown on gang violence when prisoners were lined in formation during the opening of a new jail in February.
As part of the Honduran government’s Operation Faith and Hope, military police searched the cellblocks controlled by the Barrio 18 gang at the Támara prison and recovered a cache of ammunition, guns, assault rifles and grenades.
‘The corruption in the prisons is over,’ military police colonel Fernando Muñoz said in a press conference. ‘We are going to control it and there will be no calls coming out of here to order extortions or executions.’
‘Our mission is to defeat organized crime inside the prisons and we are (also) going after the intellectual authors operating from outside,’ said Defense Minister Jose Manuel Zelaya in a tweet.
The full takeover comes after female inmates, who are members of the Barrio 18 gang, had firearms, machetes and a flammable liquid smuggled into the women’s prison in Támara last Tuesday.
Source: Daily Mail
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