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| Investigation Finds Massacre of 68 at Prison in Honduras |
| By New York Times |
| Published: 05/30/2003 |
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After the shooting and the screaming and the smoke faded away, the guardians of state security scrambled to write the story of how 68 people were killed inside the prison walls here on April 5. They said 59 of the dead were vicious gang members who shot other prisoners, then barricaded themselves inside two cell blocks and set a suicidal fire, killing innocent victims in the process. But that first draft of history is now crumbling into dust. What happened at El Porvenir, according to an independent report commissioned by the president of Honduras, was in fact among the worst prison massacres in many years. A draft copy of the report, which was to be sent to President Ricardo Maduro last week, says 51 of the dead were executed -- shot, stabbed, beaten or burned to death by a force of state police officers, soldiers, prison officers and prisoners working with the officers. All were members of the Mara 18, a feared youth gang. It was, with a handful of exceptions, the Mara who died at El Porvenir. Almost every member of the gang who survived was wounded. 'It is not true that the police opened fire to break up a chaotic fight, as some have attempted to establish,' the report says. 'They fired on a defined group within the prison population.' Church leaders said the El Porvenir report, written by three outside experts appointed by the Ministry of State Security, might force the nation to deal in a different way with its most despised citizens -- the growing number of teenage gang members. Their emergence reflects the acute social problems of Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere, a country that has been trying to build a justice system and a civil society out of very little after three decades of military rule. Like other Central American countries, it has been struggling with its transition to a democratic system. |
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