[Nettime-bold] Six inmates killed in Mexican jail riot

[radtimes <resist@best.com>]

Six inmates killed in Mexican jail riot

Wed,  3 Oct 2001

Six inmates have been killed and 10 others injured after Mexican 
authorities called in special agents to put down a riot at a prison.

The riot erupted shortly after dawn at the 1,942-inmate Cereso Nogales II 
prison in the Mexican city of Nogales, just across the border from its 
smaller twin city Nogales, Arizona.

As officials conducted roll-call in the prison's solitary confinement wing, 
"a small collection" of inmates used knives made from kitchen utensils to 
overpower four guards, said Leopoldo Guzman, a spokesman for the government 
of northern Sonora state.

As prison authorities rushed to the isolated wing, the inmates who began 
the uprising opened the cells of more than 120 other prisoners who used 
knifes and clubs made from bed posts and sink pipes to beat back guards, Mr 
Guzman said.

Officials tried to negotiate the release of the captured guards, then 
called in special state police agents who stormed the prison and fought 
through barricades of furniture and debris erected around the solitary 
confinement wing by the rioting inmates.

After a five-hour stand-off, agents were able to regain control of the 
prison without firing their guns, the statement said.

The official report denied the accounts of local television and newspaper 
reporters who said they heard shots upon arriving outside the prison.

In a press conference, Sonora's Interior Minister, Oscar Lopez, said six 
inmates were killed after being stabbed by fellow prisoners wielding 
homemade knives. Another 10 prisoners were injured in fighting between 
rioting inmates, he said.

"Not one inmate was injured by agents of the state police," Mr Lopez said, 
adding that no prison official was seriously injured in the riot.

But Mexican television reports put the number killed in the riot as high as 
10 and said that as many as 50 other inmates and guards may have been injured.

See this story on the web at http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_413976.html


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