PRISONS: Tragedies Put Venezuela Back in the Headlines

By Estrella Gutiérrez Reprint | | Print |

Estrella Gutierrez

CARACAS, Nov 25 1997 (IPS) - A prison fire which left at least 16 inmates dead and a riot in another penitentiary put Venezuela back in the headlines Tuesday, once again due to the sad state of its penal system.

A fire in western Venezuela’s Sabaneta prison, which enjoys a sorry fame, left 16 prisoners dead and 32 wounded – 10 in critical condition – on Tuesday in an incident reported as an accident.

In addition, a “shoot-out with high calibre fire-arms” in the hands of inmates in the Los Llanos penitentiary, also in the west of Venezuela, claimed an unspecified number of lives, according to Justice Minister Hilarion Cardozo.

The director of Sabaneta, Waldo Uria, said the fire was apparently caused by a short-circuit in the electrical wiring in block 3, where more than 100 prisoners were sleeping in their cells.

One prisoner died as a result of burns while the rest were the victims of smoke inhalation. The doctors say there is little hope of survival for the 10 critically wounded prisoners.

Sabaneta is the penitentiary of Maracaibo, the second largest city in the country and the centre of its oil activity, located 700 kms west of Caracas.

In January 1994 the prison was the scene of a bloody riot and fire in which 129 inmates were killed, according to official records. The riot triggered a fire which spread through two entire blocks of the penitentiary, causing the second worst prison tragedy in Latin America in 15 years.

Conditions in Sabaneta prison have somewhat improved since then, but it remains overcrowded, with installations designed for 1,000 housing 2,400, the Justice Ministry reported Tuesday.

The installations are filthy, forced idleness and drugs create a tense atmosphere and there is an explosive mixture of dangerous prisoners with the rest of the inmates.

Uria denied negligence on the part of authorities in responding to Tuesday’s fire, which occurred at 3:30 AM local time (7:30 GMT). He said it was impossible to open the bars of the cells and the affected area because “the flames were very high from the start.”

According to Uria, the prison guards and National Guard troops – which supervise Venezuela’s 34 prisons – helped break holes in the walls, “which allowed many prisoners to be saved.”

The prison director said section A of block 3 – the site of the faulty electrical wiring – housed prisoners with “excellent conduct.” He responded in the negative to suggestions that the fire could have been started by prisoners or guards.

Antonio Rivari, a deputy in the parliament of the state of Zulia, of which Maracaibo is the capital, said he had received a phone call Monday night warning that a tragedy would occur in block 3. He did not reveal his source.

Other regional legislators demanded the removal of the prison director, and said they had known something would happen. They failed to specify, however, the reasons that led them to that assumption.

In October 1996, the world was shocked by images of the corpses of 26 inmates who were burnt to death in La Planta prison in Caracas, after military troops locked them in a small cell and tossed in tear gas cannisters which sparked a fire.

The last prison massacre in Venezuela took place on Aug. 28, when 42 inmates were killed and 27 wounded in a brawl between two rival gangs inhabiting two large adjacent cells in El Dorado prison in a jungle region in Venezuela.

Antonio Medrano, the chief of the Maracaibo firefighters, said the cause of Tuesday’s fire was apparently a short-circuit in the wiring. He added that no evidence pointing to arson had been found.

Uria reported that only four of the prisoners who died in the fire were serving sentences, while the rest were remand prisoners awaiting trial. More than 70 percent of Venezuela’s 25,000 inmates have not been convicted, due to a judicial system in which cases often drag on for years – another factor which compounds the problems plaguing the country’s penitentiary system.

Amnesty International, Americas Watch and other international watchdog organisations say Venezuela’s prisons are its biggest human rights problem.

In 1996, a total of 181 prisoners died in prison, a figure significantly lower than in previous years. Measures were taken to humanise the installations and make it possible for all prisoners to be transferred to court when cited for trial.

But this year, deaths have once again become almost routine in the penitentiaries since President Rafael Caldera named Cardozo – a Christian Democratic figure with a decades-long friendship with the president but no experience in the prison system – to the Justice Ministry.

All this in a country that abolished the death penalty in 1863, and where the maximum possible sentence is 30 years.

Criminologist Elio Gomez Grillo says the prisons have become “human dumps,” because the majority of those struggling to survive inside are poor, and there is little social sensitivity with respect to their plight.

Immediately following last August’s El Dorado massacre, the controversial justice minister said that “nothing can be done when one prisoner decides to wring another’s neck.”

No authorities have been sanctioned in any of the episodes in which large numbers of prisoners have been killed, nor have the results of the investigations been released.

Three justice ministers and five prison directors have sat in those posts in the almost four years since Caldera entered office.

Cardozo admitted Tuesday that only in 1998 would he have the funds to start refurbishing penitentiaries to prevent accidents like the fire in Sabaneta, and to increase the number of guards in order to keep prisoners from spending so much time locked in their cells. He pointed out that in Sabaneta there were only 14 civilian guards for a prison population of 2,400.