International
Ecuadorian Ombudsman’s Office reports violent deaths of prisoners in prisons under military control
The Ombudsman’s Office of Ecuador issued a statement where it reported cases of violent deaths of prisoners in prisons under military control “with signs of alleged torture,” as well as warnings of deaths of prisoners due to malnutrition.
This report was issued by the Ombudsman’s Office after a judge ordered this institution to investigate the allegations of human rights violations filed by non-governmental organizations during the militarization of prisons ordered by the Government of President Daniel Noboa in the framework of the “internal armed conflict” that he declared against organized crime.
According to its report, the Ombudsman’s Office counted 24 deaths of prisoners in various prisons in the country between February 9 and March 7, 2024, “by natural deaths and in other cases by violent deaths, with indications of alleged torture. Likewise, there are alerts of the death of PPL (persons deprived of liberty) with signs of malnutrition.”
That record corresponds to the first of the three months that the state of emergency that Noboa decreed at the national level against criminal gangs lasted, and whose declaration of “internal armed conflict” remains in force, with which the Government has come to name these groups as terrorists and non-state belligerent actors.
“From the information collected by family members, people deprived of liberty, the media and civil society, the increase in deaths in the CPL (centers of deprivation of liberty) was identified, they are in the custody of the Armed Forces,” said the Ombudsman’s Office.
The institution that ensures the fulfillment of fundamental rights in Ecuador pointed out that it is constantly monitoring the prisons of the provinces of Esmeraldas, Santo Domingo, Carchi, Imbabura, Pichincha (whose capital is Quito), Cotopaxi, Sucumbíos and Napo, in which the food service was suspended since May 1.
Likewise, it echoed the journalistic reports that warn that the suspension of the food service will be extended to the province of Guayas, whose capital is Guayaquil, where the largest prison complex in the country is located, which with about 12,000 inmates, approximately a third of the country’s prison population.
“The authorities were aware of the possible risk of incidents in the centers due to food problems,” said the Ombudsman’s Office.
The SOS Cárceles Ecuador platform denounced the alleged death of an inmate from the Latacunga prison, in the province of Cotopaxi, for alleged malnutrition, information that so far has not been confirmed nor denied by the National Service of Integral Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), the State’s prison agency.
The Government has attributed the suspension of the food service to an alleged link of the supplier company to organized crime, while the company has pointed out in the media that it registers a significant State debt.
In some prisons, the relatives of the prisoners have organized themselves to collect donations and provide food to their imprisoned relatives.
Ecuador’s prisons are one of the epicenters of Ecuador’s violence crisis, as many of them are under the control of criminal gangs, so Noboa went on to militarize them when he decreed a state of emergency at the national level at the beginning of the year.
Between 2020 and 2023, more than 500 prisoners were murdered within them, most of them in a series of bloody prison massacres due to disputes between rival gangs.
These gangs, mainly dedicated to drug trafficking, are credited with the swell of violence that plagues Ecuador and that has led it to be among the first countries in Latin America with the most homicides, with a rate of 47 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, according to the Ecuadorian Observatory of Organized Crime (OECO).
So far Noboa has closed ranks around state forces in the face of allegations of human rights violations during what the head of state has called a “war” on organized crime.
On Monday, the Deputy Minister of Government, Esteban Torres, rejected the letter sent by the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) to Noboa in which he expressed to him that his evaluations of that first state of emergency determined that the declaration of “internal armed conflict” is not sufficiently motivated and that that measure contributed to serious human rights violations.
International
President of Mexico concludes his government with 12,319 members of organized crime arrested
The Government of the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, (2018-2024) will conclude this month with a total of 12,319 members of organized crime arrested, almost 2,600 drug trafficking laboratories destroyed and the 19% drop in the monthly number of homicides, its latest Security Report said on Tuesday.
In the six-year period, the federal authorities arrested 94,240 criminals, including 12,319 organized crime and 8,509 “priority targets”, such as Rafael Caro Quintero, alias El narco de narcos, and Ovidio Guzmán, one of the sons of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, said Rosa Icela Rodríguez, the Secretary of Security.
As a sign of the fight against drug trafficking, Rodríguez announced in the morning conference of the National Palace the destruction of 2,593 clandestine laboratories for the production of synthetic drugs during the last six years.
The Mexican agents, he detailed, confiscated more than 95,000 kilograms of chemicals and more than 44,000 kilograms of drugs.
Of this amount, he highlighted the seizure of 795 tons of marijuana, 205 tons of cocaine, 775 tons of methamphetamine, 1,616 kilograms of heroin and 1,338 kilograms of opium gum, as well as the destruction of 11,000 hectares of marijuana, 66,000 of poppy and 70 of coca leaves.
He also reported a record confiscation of 8,000 kilograms of fentanyl, a synthetic drug that has been the priority of the United States Government, which in 2021 signed with Mexico the Bicentennial Understanding to combat violence and drug trafficking.
Despite the data, the head of the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) said that López Obrador abandoned the logic of the ‘war against drugs’ declared by former President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012).
“Mr. President, thank you for teaching us the culture of peace, above war,” Rodríguez said.
The Secretary of Security insisted that the López Obrador Administration, who took office on December 1, 2018, reduced the monthly incidence of homicides by 19%, by reporting 2,546 in July compared to the historical maximum of 3,074 in July 2018, in the final phase of the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).
But preliminary data that she exhibited on September 3 showed that the López Obrador government will conclude with a record accumulated of at least 193,612 homicides from 2019 to 2024, an increase of 23.16% compared to the 157,198 committed from 2013 to 2018 under Peña Nieto.
The head of the SSPC also reported a drop in the monthly incidence of crimes such as kidnapping (-77% to 37 per month), femicide (-41.6% to 63 per month), and total theft (-30.2% to 45,719 per month).
As one of López Obrador’s main achievements, the secretary cited a reduction during her administration of more than 15 points in the perception of insecurity, up to 59.4% of the population, one of the lowest measurements of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi), an autonomous body.
“This means that more and more people consider it safe to live in their city, it is also important to consider that this consistent downward trend, during a period of 22 quarters is something that is practically not observed in any country in the world,” Rodríguez said.
According to Inegi data, the secretary also explained that between 2018 and 2022 in 17 entities the crime victim rate and the percentage of poverty fell, while in the first half of 2024 the number of households of victims of theft or extortion fell by 12.7% compared to 2018.
He also highlighted that the government institution in which the population trusts the most is the federal government, with a record of 59.1% that expressed its confidence in 2023, compared to 25.5% in 2017, according to Inegi.
“The way of governing in Mexico has had a positive impact on the population. They are great advances of the transformation movement, led by President López Obrador, a solid basis for the new Government of the president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum,” he concluded.
International
Ukraine allocates 10.8 billion euros more to its Army until the end of the year
The Ukrainian Supreme Rada (Parliament) approved this Wednesday to allocate 500 billion more grivnas (about 10.8 billion euros) to cover the financing needs of the Army until the end of the year, according to Ukrainian deputies on their social networks.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal had previously explained that the original budget for 2024 would not be enough, since it had been calculated taking into account that the war would end this summer.
Ukraine devotes 100% of its taxes at the national level to military and defense expenses, and covers the financing of public services and other civilian expenses thanks to international aid.
As Shmigal explained at the time, each soldier costs the Ukrainian State an average of 32,000 dollars a year.
The budget rectification approved this Wednesday should be financed with the issuance of debt and with the increase in taxes such as the one applied to tobacco or fuel, as explained by the president of the Committee on the Budget of the Parliament, Roksolana Pidlasa.
The Ukrainian Parliament approved on Tuesday in first reading (so it will require a second vote to be adopted) a tax increase that affects the so-called war rate, which taxes taxpayers to finance the Army and goes from 1.5 to 5%.
The new legislation also raises taxes on several tax segments and introduces changes in taxation for banks and companies.
International
Manipulated ‘you’ searches’ and a fake message: what is known about the explosions in Lebanon
A new shipment of search devices used by members of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbulá, originally manipulated before arriving in Lebanon, and a false message that detonated them remotely are the most likely hypotheses of the chain of explosions that this Tuesday caused at least twelve deaths in an operation attributed to Israel.
According to various sources, and in the absence of knowing the exact details, including who was the author of that cyber attack that from Lebanon is attributed to Israel, the Lebanese Minister of Telecommunications, Johnny Corn, assures that the devices that exploded were part of a shipment that “recently” arrived” in Lebanon.
He states that “maybe it was activated remotely,” although he does not yet know how, and indicates that, according to preliminary information, “the batteries of the people seekers heated up.”
It may, therefore, that even some people threw away those devices before they exploded.
This is what is known so far about this unusual and sophisticated operation:
Since the simultaneous attack, which injured thousands of people, including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, and which affected members of the Shii armed formation in Syria, there have been numerous hypotheses about how this attack could have occurred.
The most likely, and that some experts are already pointing out, such as the military analyst and independent politician, Elijah J. Magnier, is that an explosive trap was placed inside the devices, which “were not imported directly to Lebanon, but were stopped in a nearby country for three months, where Israel implanted the explosive.”
In what would be a sophisticated infiltration in the supply chain of these devices, Israel would have placed the explosives in that batch of devices, in total about 3,000, according to several US media, including The New York Times, always citing anonymous sources.
These explosives would have been implanted next to the battery of each of the mensaphones, which is why there was an overheating prior to the explosion, to which a mechanism was added to detonate them remotely.
That mechanism was a false message, which supposedly came from the dome of Hezbulá, and that when punctured activated the explosives.
Before the detonation, according to the sources, the device was programmed to beep for several seconds.
This type of attacks on supply chains is a concern in the field of cybersecurity due to the potential ‘hacks’ that may occur in the development phases, although these actions are normally limited to software and not to hardware, since for the latter it is required to have accessed the device during the assembly line.
Several computer experts consulted by EFE support the theory that, for these explosions to occur, the devices would have to have been manipulated at origin or destination, pointing out that the manufacturers of the components of these mensaphones are the ones who should respond to this.
And they have done so, since according to the New York Times, Hizbulá commissioned the devices from the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo.
However, the Asian company denied in a statement having manufactured these devices and indicated that the person responsible for producing them is a company called ‘BAC’, which is based in Budapest.
Regarding the AR-924 ‘person-seeker’ that would have been used in the explosions, the Taiwanese company reiterates that it is a model “produced and sold” by BAC.
“We only provide the authorization of the registered trademark and we are not involved in the design or manufacture of this product. We always adhere to the relevant regulations and maintain a transparent and compliant cooperation with our partners,” the statement concluded.
The Shiite group uses among its members this kind of devices as a means of communication to avoid being geolocated by Israel, which usually carries out selective murders against members of Hezbullah, among other factions present in Lebanon and Syria.
Mensaphones, which became obsolete with the arrival of the mobile phone, are low-tech wireless devices that basically receive alphanumeric and bidirectional messages, with the ability to send and receive short messages.
President of Mexico concludes his government with 12,319 members of organized crime arrested
Ukraine allocates 10.8 billion euros more to its Army until the end of the year
Manipulated ‘you’ searches’ and a fake message: what is known about the explosions in Lebanon
Tec de Monterrey honors one of its students for his contribution to nanotechnology in medicine
Defense Minister commends salvadoran soldier for Central American Cross Country victory
Ecuador prison riot leaves at least 43 dead
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