Fire in a Detention Center in Venezuela Leaves 68 Dead

As the number of victims from a fire in a police detention center in northern Venezuela has reached at least 68 dead, officials in the country claim that prisoners intentionally set the fire to escape. According to Tarek William Saab, the Attorney General of Venezuela, the fire occurred on Wednesday night at the central police headquarters in Carabobo state. He stated that the fire was deliberate. Carlos Nieto, head of the NGO 'Window to Freedom,' which advocates for prisoner rights, said that several prisoners burned alive in the fire, while others suffocated. He noted that the prisoners set their mattresses on fire and disarmed a guard to facilitate their escape. Meanwhile, police dispersed the relatives of prisoners who were trying to enter the detention center with tear gas. According to AFP, Venezuela's detention centers and prisons often hold more inmates than their capacity, and prisoners are kept in very poor conditions. Due to overcrowding, many prisoners are sent to police detention centers. Based on estimates from the NGO 'Window to Freedom,' the detention center that burned on Wednesday housed five times its capacity of inmates. Carlos Nieto stated that this incident is just a sample of the dire conditions in the prisons and detention centers of the country. The organization reported that last year, 65 people died in Venezuelan prisons due to violence, malnutrition, and tuberculosis. Two weeks ago, 58 prisoners escaped from a prison on Margarita Island by digging a tunnel, but they were all recaptured. In August 2017, a riot in a police detention center in Amazonas state resulted in 36 deaths and 14 injuries. In April 2017, a clash among prisoners at the Puente Ayala prison in Barcellona state left 12 dead and 11 injured. The month before that, remains of 14 bodies were discovered in a mass grave at a public prison in Venezuela in San Juan de los Morros.