September 21, 2023 11:03 am
Venezuelan soldiers in front of the Tocorón prison (Yuri Cortez, AFP)
Venezuela said on September 20 that it had taken control of a prison run by a powerful criminal gang with branches abroad. The operation involved eleven thousand members of the security forces.
The Tocorón prison was the headquarters of the Tren de Aragua gang, which had installed a zoo, a swimming pool and a gambling hall in the prison, according to investigative journalist Ronna Rísquez, interviewed by AFP.
The government issued a statement congratulating the police on the success of the operation, conducted in the northern state of Aragua.
Interior Minister Remigio Ceballos told state broadcaster VTV that the detainees had been transferred to another facility.
Dozens of relatives who lived in the prison with the inmates gathered outside for news.
“I’m trying to figure out where they’re going to take my husband,” Gladys Hernández said. “I lived in the prison, but they kicked us out.”
Officers took motorcycles, televisions, air conditioners and microwave ovens out of the prison.
Some detainees appear to have escaped during the operation, as the government announced a “second phase” to “search and capture fugitives”.
Baseball field and disco
The Tren de Aragua gang, the most powerful in Venezuela, is involved in criminal activities throughout the country and even outside the national borders.
According to an investigation by Rísquez, the gang members number around five thousand.
Born about ten years ago, the gang is involved in kidnappings, robberies, drug trafficking, prostitution, extortion and illegal mining.
According to the think tank InSight crime, it is also involved in migrant smuggling.
Rísquez explained that the gang took advantage of the country’s political and economic crisis to expand its influence. Today it is present in eight other Latin American countries.
He described the prison as a “hotel” for gang members, with a bank, a baseball field, a restaurant and even a nightclub.
The leader of the gang is Héctor Guerrero Flores, who is serving a seventeen-year prison sentence for murder and drug trafficking, said Carlos Nieto, coordinator of the NGO A window for freedom, which deals with prisoners’ rights.
“But he could enter and exit Tocorón freely,” Rísquez added.
According to the Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP), the country’s prisons are overcrowded and the detention conditions are terrible.
“The operation shows that the Venezuelan prison system is in chaos,” Nieto said.
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2023-09-21 09:11:36
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