TEGUCIGALPA — Following a gang conflict that left 46 inmates dead in a women's detention center last week, officials said, Honduras' military started seizing control of the nation's worst jails on Monday.
In an effort to combat organized crime activities within jails, President Xiomara Castro said last week that she would give the military police leadership of the prison system, reversing a previous policy of demilitarizing security.
On the floor of the high-security Tamara jail in Honduras, dozens of shirtless male detainees, many of whom had tattoos and shaved heads, were shown in an official video being surrounded by highly armed guards.
The pictures resemble those released earlier this year by the government of El Salvador, a neighboring country that has increased jail security and imprisoned more than 62,000 suspected criminals as part of an anti-gang campaign.
“Our mission is to defeat organized crime inside the prisons and we are [also] going after the intellectual authors operating from outside,” Defense Minister Jose Manuel Zelaya said in a tweet.
According to a spokesman for the Armed Forces, Antonio Coello, Tamara, which has 4,200 convicts crowded into a building designed to hold 2,500, is one of two jails that the military police took charge of on Monday along with La Tolva.
According to a United Nations assessment, there are currently 20,000 convicts living in 26 overcrowded jails in Honduras. The country's prison system is also 34.2 percent over capacity.
In a section of the Tamara jail controlled by the Barrio 18 gang on Monday, military police recovered firearms, machine guns, ammo, magazines, and grenades, Colonel Fernando Munoz said to reporters.
“The corruption in the prisons is over. We are going to control it and there will be no calls coming out of here to order extortions or executions,” the officer said in a press conference.
