49 dead after Mexico prison riot

Relatives of inmates stand outside the Topo Chico prison            (C)AP

A prison riot that left 49 inmates hacked, beaten or burned to death opened searing questions about gang rule, extortion and human rights violations in Mexico’s overcrowded prisons, where people merely awaiting trial are mixed in with some of the world’s most hardened killers. The fight took less than an hour left 49 followers of two rival gang leaders dead, , stabbed and beaten to death in an overcrowded, aging prison in the northern city of Monterrey. The trouble began just before midnight on Wednesday at the Topo Chico Prison when a struggle broke out between the gangs led by Jorge Ivan Hernández Cantú and Juan Pedro Saldívar Farías, said Gov. Jaime Rodríguez Calderón of Nuevo León. All of the dead were inmates, he said. The state government put the original death toll at 52, but officials said they had found only 49 bodies. One inmate was killed by a shot fired by a guard, Mr. Rodríguez said in interviews with local news media, but the rest were stabbed and beaten to death.
The two gang leaders, both serving sentences for organized crime activities, had been moved from federal prisons. The government identified 40 of the dead on Thursday afternoon, and neither of the gang leaders was on the list. Video footage taken by local residents from nearby rooftops showed the crowds of men shouting at each other in a prison yard. As the violence spread, inmates set fire to the prison warehouse. Initial news reports said the riot had broken out as part of an escape attempt, but the government said none of the inmates had escaped.
“We are living through tragedy due to the conditions in the prisons,” Mr. Rodríguez said at a news conference in Monterrey.
There are only 100 guards for an inmate population of 3,800, he said. “These are legacies of many years, the result of a serious lack of attention in the penitentiary system.”
Forces from the federal police and branches of the military surrounded the prison, Mr. Rodríguez said, but they made no attempt to enter it because its layout prevented a rapid deployment inside. Mexican prisons are severely overcrowded, and riots frequently break out. In September, a leader of the Zetas drug gang was stabbed to death at Topo Chico in a riot that left 11 inmates wounded. In February 2012, 44 prisoners were bludgeoned and stabbed to death as guards stood by in a state prison in Apodaca, in the Monterrey suburbs, in a riot started by the Zetas. As the Zetas killed inmates from their rivals in the Gulf drug gang, 30 Zeta leaders escaped. The month before, 31 inmates died in a prison in a neighboring state, Tamaulipas, in fighting between Zetas and the Gulf gang.