Several persons deprived of liberty contacted their families, despite the fact that on more than one occasion they have spoken of signal inhibitors.
After 6:00 p.m. on Friday, November 12, 2021, the first shots were registered, followed by explosions at the Centro de Rehabilitación Social Varones No. 1 in Guayaquil, a name now carried by the Litoral Penitentiary, in the northwest of the city. porteña.
Pavilion 2 was the target of dozens of inmates from other pavilions, who, armed with pistols, rifles, combos, pickaxes and explosive devices, damaged concrete padlocks, doors and walls. In their wake they left death: destroyed and burned bodies. According to the latest count given by the authorities, the death toll is 62; some 30 bodies have already been handed over to the bereaved.
As Friday night wore on, the violence increased. The roar could be heard from the nearby housing cooperatives and urbanizations that are on the other side of the Daule River. It shook the souls of mothers, wives, and children of the inmates who were waiting outside that prison, which has an overcrowding of more than 60%.
80 guards without weapons for 8,000 inmates: what is happening in the Litoral Penitentiary, the Ecuadorian prison that adds almost 190 deaths in two massacres
Despite the supposed inhibition of technological devices, which in theory prevents contact from the inside with the outside, after midnight, inmates registered the incidents with their phones: some to show the savagery they can reach while shouting “Mafia JR” and others to ask for help. From the Heisenberg German Facebook account, a person made a live video feed. The images showed the corridor that separates the cells.
You could hear the hit of a combo and a pickaxe against a wall. “I’m going to kill you!” Was the constant shout that filtered into the audio of the transmission, in the background, while the person holding the cell phone pleaded with the Police, the Armed Forces, and President Guillermo Lasso for help. On Friday night, the president participated in a reception to commemorate the 246 years anniversary of the creation of the United States Marine Corps.
Here is an excerpt from the testimony of the person speaking on the broadcast:
“We are in wing 3, they want to knock down the wall that is there. They have had almost two hours to want to knock her down, more than 4 hours, and the Police do not enter, please …
Gentlemen, share the video, please. We haven’t eaten since yesterday, the day before yesterday, sorry. Help us.
Sir, please give him time to open the door, please. Help us, give them time to open the door of the pavilion and want to get in.
Gentlemen, I am not against any pavilion, but I do not want this to happen to adults and most likely it will happen to adults if the Police and the military do not enter.
Most Holy Father, help us.
Gentlemen, please send him to the news, to the president, put him hashtag, please, instead of commenting absurd things. We need it to reach the ears of the whole world.
Please, I ask you to mention them: to the police, to the news, to everyone.
Gentlemen, we are dumped here, for the love of God. Hall 1 does not help us at all.
Gentlemen, all those in pavilion 3 are outside our pavilion, there is no one who controls them. That’s ugly! Bombshell. They want to mess with everything, father.
Gentlemen, throw tear gas canisters.
Everyone shouts JR Gentlemen, help us, please.
Help out by sharing. The helicopter came, it lit up. Helped people who are entering and left. Nothing else did the helicopter, gentlemen.
Where are they? (asks another inmate).
Sirs. They are waiting to kill us all.
There are many people, gentlemen.
There are many people who are dead.
For the love of God, they want to set the whole pavilion on fire. Someone to help us, gentlemen.
They want to set fire in here. Pour water in there! Pour water! There, on the roof.
Gentlemen, please help us. I don’t know what else to tell you, please, gentlemen.
Gentlemen, 911, please.
Gentlemen, please, already entered.
Let this video be for the record, that they could have done something and did nothing, gentlemen. They are already inside.
I don’t know if they listen. They want to cut off heads, gentlemen, I beg you, let the military come in.
Gentlemen, absolutely no one enters, they keep poking the walls below, for God’s sake.
Here we have a gunshot wounded, Luis MLP (gives full name), if they know of his relatives, he is wounded, he is wounded.
Gentlemen, there are more dead at the bottom.
We all ran upstairs. So I could not tell you all this is uncertain, it is not known how many deaths there are.
I regret to inform you that a colleague of mine was killed by a bomb.
They have killed everyone, almost everyone in the pavilion, that is at the entrance of the management, gentlemen. Unfortunately a friend of mine died there. They called him Pepito.
Gentlemen, you want to come in with everything, for the love of God.
Gentlemen, there are many people here who are only for research and I include myself in this case, gentlemen. We are innocent people. Don’t think that everyone here is bad.
Gentlemen, they apparently killed everyone in ward F.
The wall is going to explode at any moment, gentlemen. If I stop broadcasting it is because they have already entered this wing ”…
Pain and indignation at the removal of the bodies of murdered inmates at the Litoral Penitentiary
The Facebook account that he transmitted was suspended. On that occasion, the communication served to alert the authorities of the problems that were being experienced inside the jail. However, the telephone contacts and internet data that arise from that place have also served to dispatch orders for murders, robberies, extortion, fraud, among other crimes that the Prosecutor’s Office and the Police investigators have investigated.
Other inmates communicated via WhatsApp messages with their loved ones. “Pray for me” was read in screenshots that circulated on social networks and were also reviewed by relatives of inmates, who went to the police crime laboratory to identify the bodies.
Cellular signal without blocking
On countless occasions, the role of cell signal inhibitors to prevent inmates from communicating with the outside has been mentioned.
However, the former director of the National Service for Comprehensive Attention to Adults Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), Bolívar Garzón, said on November 9 that there “there are no inhibitors placed by the SNAI.”
“What exists is the signal blocking by normal telephony. That is intermittent, it is a matter of the (telephone) company. We have held meetings with the company to allow this blockade, but it is not permanent ”.
On the other hand, a source that was part of the SNAI, who prefers to keep his identity confidential, assured that there were such teams this year. He said that these devices are deactivated after inmates threaten relatives of the servers in charge. Those devices have also been destroyed or damaged.
Resolution 201-0995 of the Agency for the Regulation and Control of Telecommunications (Arcotel) allows “the use of signal inhibiting equipment inside regional and local social rehabilitation centers, after compliance with the procedures issued for this purpose the Arcotel for the installation of signal inhibitors, particularly, through the approval of an adequate engineering study and test protocols for their installation, with the obligation not to generate interference outside the social rehabilitation center ”.
This newspaper requested an interview with the Arcotel to find out the details of the approval process for the use of inhibitors and the monitoring of the operation of these devices, but until the closing of this article the appointment was not made. (I)
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
