Venezuela inmates holding 60 hostages—rights group

CARACAS – About 60 employees of a Venezuelan prison have been held captive over the weekend by inmates demanding transfers, authorities and the rights group Window of Freedom said Sunday.

“There are approximately 60 people, prison workers, who have been held hostage since Friday afternoon by a group of inmates” at the Minima Prison in Carabobo state, the coordinator of the non-governmental prison monitor group, Carlos Nieto, told AFP.

An interview with Minister of Corrections Iris Varela aired Sunday on Venezuelan television, but the minister did not address the situation at Minima.

Regional prisoner director Reinaldo Rangel however confirmed in an interview with private channel Globovision that a “crisis” was underway at the prison, and that authorities were seeking a dialogue with the prisoners.

Venezuelan prisons are plagued by overcrowding and violence, and armed prisoners are not uncommon. In July Venezuelan authorities quelled a brutal, month-long uprising at a notorious prison near Caracas, but not before some 30 prisoners died.

Nieto said the inmates “are asking for their transfer back to their original prisons,” after being taken to the Carabobo facility in recent weeks. He said authorities met the demands of some inmates and allowed some transfers, but staff were still being kept as hostages as inmates sought further transfers.

Varela, who heads a ministry that was just created in July in the midst of the huge uprising near Caracas, said the government was promoting the fight against “mafias” that have long unleashed violence within the country’s detention facilities, and promoting a plan to disarm prisoners.

According to official data, the 34 prisons in the country are home to some 50,000 inmates, even though the total capacity is only 14,000.