Honduras will build megaprison in “emergency plan” against crime

Honduras announced Friday night the construction of a megaprison for 20 thousand inmates, among more than a dozen measuresby declaring a “security emergency” to combat overwhelming crime.

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On national radio and television, President Xiomara Castro and the other members of the National Defense and Security Council (CNDS) They announced the “solution plan against crime”, in the face of citizen complaints about the rise of violence.

“Under this emergency situation declared in terms of security, it is ordered to immediately build an Emergency Detention Center (CRE) with capacity for 20 thousand prisoners in the depopulated area between the departments of Olancho and Gracias a Dios (at east of the country),” announced the head of the military, Roosevelt Hernández.

He added that those deprived of liberty currently confined in the national penitentiary system will be transferred “immediately” to the CRE. Some 30 prisons house some 21,000 inmates in the Central American country.

The construction of the prison and other measures of the plan are similar to those undertaken by the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, through which he has managed to control the “cancer” of the gangs. Upon assuming his second term on June 1, Bukele received President Castro and previously other officials of the Honduran government apparently to expose their successful security plans that could be replicated in Honduras.

The Minister of Defense, Manuel Zelaya, also announced that the tender for a prison must begin within two weeks at the latest, which had previously been announced for 2,000 inmates, in the paradisiacal Swan Islands, in the Caribbean.

The military and the police “must immediately plan and execute urgent interventions in all the municipalities of the country identified with the highest incidence of crimes of contract killing, drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, arms trafficking, illicit association and money laundering” , announced the ruler.

The Minister of Security, Gustavo Sánchez, explained that with the actions they seek to “establish control and recover the order of the physical spaces ted by criminal structures in colonies and neighborhoods in the areas that represent the highest criminal incidence.” There will also be “intensified investigation and operations for the location, eradication, securing, destruction of coca leaf plantations, marijuana and processing centers of drugs,” he added.

For decades, Honduras, like the other Central American countries, It has been considered a bridge for the passage of cocaine from producing countries in South America. to the United States market, but since 2017 Honduran authorities have detected vast coca plantations and laboratories to process cocaine.

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