Forty-nine inmates died and dozens more were injured after a fire broke out during a riot at a Colombia prison, the country’s top prison official told Colombian Radio on Tuesday morning.
The official, General Tito Castellanos, Director of the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute, told Radio Nacional de Colombia that inmates at Tuluá Prison, in southwestern Colombia, had set fire to mattresses, causing an uncontrollable fire in a pavilion occupied by about 180 inmates.
“It is a sad and disastrous event,” General Castellanos told Caracol, another Colombian radio station.
He added that the fire broke out at about 2 a.m. at the prison, which houses a total of more than 1,200 inmates. Some guards were also injured, General Castellanos said, adding that he was unaware of any prisoner escapes.
“We regret the events in Tuluá prison,” Colombian President Iván Duque said. wrote on Twitter, adding that he was in contact with General Castellanos. “I have given instructions to conduct investigations to clarify this dire situation,” Mr Duque added. “My solidarity with the families of the victims.”
In 2020, more than 20 inmates died at La Modelo prison in the Colombian capital, Bogotá, amid clashes with the institution’s authorities over what inmates said were insufficient precautions against the coronavirus.
Colombian President-elect Gustavo Petro wrote on Twitter that what had happened in Tuluá, “like the La Modelo massacre, forces a complete rethink of prison policy in terms of the humanization of the prison and the dignity of the prisoner.”
“The Colombian state has seen the prison as a space for revenge and not for rehabilitation,” he added.
