FRAIJANES, Guatemala - Inmates used torture to run a violent Guatemalan
prison for more than 10 years without interference from authorities and may have
buried corpses on its sprawling grounds, officials said.
Soldiers took the control of Pavon
prison in Fraijanes, Guatemala on Monday Sept. 25, 2006. Guatemalan
security forces killed seven inmates on Monday when they took control of
the prison. [AP] |
About 3,000 police and soldiers firing automatic weapons stormed Pavon prison
outside of the town of Fraijanes near the capital Guatemala City on Monday,
retaking a jail controlled since 1996 by a committee of inmates.
An "order committee" of hardened criminals including convicted murderers and
rapists had ruled Pavon through extortion and punishment of prisoners who
disobeyed them, Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann said on Thursday.
What began in 1986 as a prisoners committee looking for better conditions
gained more and more control over the next decade, then signed a pact with
national prison authorities to run the place, said prison director Alejandro
Giammattei.
The authorities simply decided it was easier just to control the perimeter
than to police what was going on inside the 1,600-inmate facility, he said.
The inmates bribed the perimeter guards, smuggled in food, drink, luxury
goods and materials to process hard drugs, some of which were sold outside,
Vielmann said.
"It was a complete tyranny inside the jail," said Vielmann, who with help
from the army and the police coordinated the recapture of the prison - a
sprawling complex with bars and barber shops, where some inmates had their own
houses.
"It was a state within a state," he said.
Prisoners who rebelled were beaten or confined without food or water in small
isolation cells for weeks, Giammattei said. He said they sometimes stripped them
naked or doused them with freezing water in a section known as the "North Pole."
The leaders of the committee forced prisoners to bring in wives or daughters
for sexual favors, even building a makeshift brothel on the grounds, said
Giammattei.
Officials suspect some prisoners who refused to comply with extortion demands
may have been killed and buried in clandestine graves in the prison. Forensic
anthropologists planned to survey the grounds on Friday.
Murderer Luis Alfonso Zepeda, who headed the order committee, and six other inmates
were killed in the raid.
Pavon's inmates were transferred to another prison.
