This accusation by the president comes after representatives of the Government presented to the Prosecutor’s Office confidential information on alleged irregularities of the company in charge of supplying food to prisons on Thursday morning.
“We will never favor state suppliers that have links to organized crime,” Noboa wrote in his X account, where he accused previous governments – without saying which ones – of “handing Ecuador over to these criminals.”
While the Service for Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI) has not yet designated the new contractor to deliver food in the penitentiaries, relatives of the inmates expressed concern for their loved ones.
Currently, 11,400 prisoners in 20 prisons are without food and the company in charge of the service has stopped operating because the Government owes it six months’ payment, local media indicated.
On the outskirts of the North Judicial Complex, a group of citizens presented this Thursday the request for precautionary measures and to put a stop to the situation.
Estefanía Garzón, whose family member is imprisoned in the Cotopaxi prison, pointed out that they recently managed to bring in three food trucks, but that they have been insufficient for all the inmates in that prison.
For weeks there have been complaints about problems with inmates’ access to food, although the SNAI stated last Friday that “food is guaranteed.”
Adding to this problem is that the Committee of Relatives of Prisoners assures that there is mistreatment and torture in penitentiaries and refers to human rights violations by the Armed Forces, which since January took control of the main prisons.
The militarization of Ecuadorian prisons occurred within the framework of the state of exception and internal armed conflict declared by the Ecuadorian president, Daniel Noboa, against organized crime amid the escalation of insecurity at the national level.
rgh/avr
