Prisoners who perished in inferno were awaiting trial, report reveals

Published on Friday 17 February 2012 00:00

The prisoners whose scorched bodies were carried out from a charred Honduran prison yesterday morning had been locked inside in overcrowded conditions where most inmates had never been charged, according to an internal Honduran government report.

The report, which was sent to the United Nations this month, said 57 per cent of some 800 inmates of the Comayagua farm prison north of the Central American country’s capital were either awaiting trial or being held as suspected gang members.

A fire that witnesses said was started by an inmate tore through the prison on Tuesday night, burning and suffocating screaming men in their locked cells as rescuers desperately searched for keys. Officials confirmed 358 dead, making it the world’s deadliest prison fire in a century.

Honduran authorities said they are still investigating other possible causes based on prisoner accounts, including that the fire could have been set in collusion with guards to stage a prison break.

Survivors told horrific tales of climbing walls to break the sheet metal roofing and escape, only to see prisoners in other cell blocks being burned alive. Inmates were found stuck to the roofing, their bodies fused to the metal.

According to the report, on any given day there were about 800 inmates in a facility built for 500. There were only 51 guards by day and just 12 at night.

On the night of the fire, only six guards were on duty, four of them in towers overlooking the prison and two in the facility itself, Fidel Tejeda, a guard at the prison for 14 years, said. One of those guards held all the keys to the prison doors, he added.

Mr Tejeda was in one of the towers and fired two shots as a warning to the other guards when he first saw flames at about 10:50pm, he said, adding that firefighters took about half an hour to arrive.

However, the Comayagua fire chief has said his men were there in 10 minutes but were kept outside the gates by guards who feared the fire was cover for a prison break.

The prison has no medical or mental health care and the budget allows less than $1 per day per prisoner for food. Prisoners only needed to bear a simple tattoo to be incarcerated under the strict Honduran anti-gang laws, the report said.

National prison system director Danilo Orellana declined to comment on the supervision or the crowded conditions in Comayagua. Inside the prison, charred walls and debris showed the path of the fire, which burned through six barracks that had been crammed with 70 to 105 inmates each in four-level bunk beds.

Bodies were found piled up in the bathrooms, where inmates apparently fled to the showers, hoping the water would save them from blistering flames.

Survivor Eladio Chica reported: “It was something horrible. I only saw flames, and when we got out, men were being burned, up against the bars, they were stuck to them.”

About 115 bodies were in the morgue yesterday, after being moved by refrigerated truck overnight.