Venezuela Prison Rebellion Ends After 20 Days

Venezuela said it took control of a prison in the western state of Merida after prisoners rioted for nearly a month and left 22 inmates dead.

The country’s military police “in the early morning hours” took “absolute control” over the prison, said Interior Ministry press secretary Jorge Galindo via his Twitter account.

Iris Varela, the country’s prisons minister, said the inmates who led the rebellion gave themselves up, but not after considerable violence and bloodshed.

“The leaders of the riot are already in the hands of the authorities,” she said, according to the BBC, which cited state television. “There will be no longer armed inmates in the prison, we will not have a situation like that in Merida state again.”

Varela said that a mother with her newborn child “had come for a visit and was kept there kidnapped” during the riots by “gang leaders of that jail,” reported the EFE news agency.

Last year, 560 people were killed and 1,457 were injured in Venezuela’s 35 prisons, which are greatly overcrowded, the Venezuelan Prison Observatory said, according to the news agency.

Venezuela’s prison system can only hold around 14,500 prisoners but currently house approximately 45,000 inmates, according to the Observatory.

Varela, when she took office last August, has said she would that around 20,000 prisoners who committed minor offenses should be conditionally released to free up space in overcrowded jails.

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