RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The President of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, has accepted this Sunday the resignation of Bolivar Fernando Garzón as general director of the National Service of Integral Attention to Adults Deprived of Liberty (SNAI) when he has exercised his functions for only 47 days.
Garzon’s resignation comes after a new massacre in the Litoral Penitentiary where 68 people have lost their lives and 25 others have been injured.
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Thus, the General Secretary of Communication of the Presidency of Ecuador has published on its social networks a decree confirming that Lasso accepts Garzón’s resignation and thanking him for his services.
The former general director of SNAI assumed his position at the end of September when the country was still in shock after another massacre at the Litoral Penitentiary in which almost 120 people died.
Now the head of the Ecuadorian penitentiary service will return to Fausto Cobo. He was the general director of SNAI until Bolivar’s arrival and is currently the head of the Strategic Intelligence Center, reports El Universo.
RESIGNATION OF THE HEAD OF THE FFAA JOINT COMMAND
Lasso also accepted the resignation of the head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces, Jorge Cabrera. They resigned after the prison crisis that the country is going through, aggravated by the killing, on Saturday, of 68 inmates in the prison of Guayaquil.
This Sunday, the President signed a decree in which he said: “to accept the resignation and to thank Vice Admiral Jorge Cabrera Espinosa for his diligent and loyal services rendered to the country in the exercise of his functions as Chief of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces”.
The Head of State appointed Major General Orlando Fabián Fuel Revelo to replace Cabrera.
He appointed Brigadier General Luis Enrique Burbano Rivera as General Commander of the Land Force through the same decree.
In a second decree, the President accepted the resignation of Colonel Fernando Garzón as General Director of the National Service of Integral Attention to Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders and thanked him for his services rendered (SNAI) in charge of the penitentiary issue.
In the same document, the General Directorate of the SNAI is entrusted to the head of the Strategic Intelligence Center. Still, none of the decrees explain the reasons for the resignations.
The changes in the military and prison authorities occurred one day after the attack of inmates in Pavilion 2 of the penitentiary, leaving 68 prisoners dead and 25 wounded.
According to Colonel Marco Ortiz, national director of technical-scientific investigation of the police, only 61 bodies could be recovered from the prison.
The state of the bodies is varied, he said, because some were burned and mutilated in the middle of the confrontations, so they have only been able to take fingerprints from 45 of the 61 bodies.
The rest of the bodies must undergo “anthropological identification and, if necessary, genetic identification. That takes more time,” Ortiz added.
Ecuador’s Human Rights Secretariat reported identifying 41 of the 68 inmates killed on Saturday in prison in the coastal city of Guayaquil (southwest).
Ecuavisa television channel showed on Sunday images of the state of Pavilion 2, which was attacked by other inmates.
The images showed large holes in several walls through which the inmates intended to enter to attack those in cellblock 2, which had been left without its leader, who had recently been released after having served 60% of his sentence, according to the authorities.
Saturday’s massacre occurred in the same prison where there was a massacre last September that resulted in the death of 118 inmates.
Following that massacre, Lasso decreed a state of emergency in the penitentiary system, a measure that has failed to stop prison violence.
Authorities presume that the clashes between inmates are due to territorial disputes between gangs allegedly linked to drug trafficking.
Lasso will preside tomorrow, Monday, a meeting with the highest authorities of different State functions to analyze the prison crisis.