Cieneguillas, Zacatecas: Almost 400 Detainees Are Transferred From The Cieneguillas Prison

Armed with riot control equipment, in addition to fire extinguishers, rubber bullets, tear gas pumps, and the support of fire tankers, two thousand members of the National Guard, Mexican Army, State Preventive Police, Road Police and Ministerial Police, took control of the Regional Center for Social Rehabilitation of Cieneguillas, on Monday night, at the northwest exit of the city of Zacatecas.

The objective of the operation, which began on Monday night —and lasted for more than twelve hours— was to execute an instruction from the federal government, to remove 400 prisoners from the siege —presumably belonging to different organized crime groups—, and transfer them to five federal prisons located in Chiapas, Michoacán, Durango, Coahuila and Oaxaca.

The operation began around 8:00 p.m. on Monday, with the deployment of heavily armed Mexican army personnel around the Cieneguillas prison, and the occupation of checkpoints and barracks around the prison. Then members of the National Guard arrived, in dozens of trucks and light vehicles, to reinforce the siege.

Also, in a hundred patrols, state police arrived at the site at around 9:30 p.m., when the “panic button” of the prison was activated, and the alert was automatically disseminated on all the “Matra” radio stations of the local corporations, as the prisoners rioted, and threatened to escape.

Euphemistically identified by the authorities as “persons deprived of liberty,” the prisoners seriously hindered the military and police from the transfer action, by rioting and confronting the uniformed personnel with sticks and stones, and causing fires with mats and blankets, until Tuesday morning, when they were controlled, with a toll of four seriously injured prisoners, who were taken in ambulances to a hospital to be treated.

The operation was led by the former director general of Operational Intelligence of the National Guard, Arturo López Bazán, current head of the Secretariat of Public Security of Zacatecas, who has seven months in that position.

Thus, after being coercively subjected in the courtyards, different cells and cannons, a total of 398 inmates were transferred in a staggered manner, in 12 buses, to the international airport of Zacatecas, protected by hundreds of military and police. From there, in a Mexican Air Force aircraft, they were transferred to different federal prisons.

Governor Tello asked for help

In January 2020, Governor Alejandro Tello Cristerna made a vehement call to the federal government to “take the prisoners,” imprisoned for crimes of the federal jurisdiction, detained in Cieneguillas, where until yesterday, Monday, there was a prison population of 1,150 inmates.

The Zacatecan president affirmed that this prison had become a “time bomb,” due to the constant fights, riots and escapes of prisoners, which have been registered on the site on a regular basis, for more than a decade, since that infamous escape of 53 members of the Zetas, through the main door of the prison, on Saturday, May 16, 2009.

Among other serious events, on the afternoon of December 31, 2019, a fight occurred in Cieneguillas between prisoners who allegedly belonged to antagonistic organized crime groups, several of whom inexplicably used firearms, ended with a toll of 18 dead and 20 seriously injured. Six months later, on May 6, 2020, in broad daylight and through a tunnel, 12 highly dangerous prisoners escaped from the place.

The governor – who in six months concludes his constitutional term as president – even publicly referred to the “possibility” that the federal government will finance the construction of a new prison in the capital of Zacatecas, because of the obsoleteness of the current one. The option of “reconfiguring”, the problematic criminal, was also handled to convert it from a medium-security prison, to high security.

In this regard, on Tuesday, lawyer Ricardo Ramírez – who served as head of the management of Cieneguillas, between 2008 and 2010 – said in an interview with this newspaper, that this option is not viable: “you should not put good money, into something bad. Cieneguillas was already surpassed for many years, in many aspects.”

“Its infrastructure is obsolete, it no longer has the necessary levels of security. I would propose leaving that prison only for accused prisoners, such as pretrial detention. And apart, build a new prison complex, with international standards, of high security.”

Last Saturday, February 27, in view of working for Zacatecas, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador recalled the abandonment in which the past federal government left the country’s prisons, as well as the general corruption in prisons, and announced that he would respond to the request of the governor of Zacatecas.

“We are going to help, so that they stop being saturated and crowded in prisons. We are going to transfer prisoners from Zacatecas to federal prisons … and there are no risks of confrontation, of riots,” López Obrador said.

https://www.jornada.com.mx/notas/2021/03/30/estados/trasladan-a-casi-400-detenidos-del-penal-de-cieneguillas-zacatecas/?fbclid=IwAR24tg307NHxaP6rTFoKhO6uoWPcwJtaQoWbXmSZjlv9e9zHeqSjYwuuB6g