Survivors of a Honduran prison fire that killed more than 350 inmates accused guards of leaving prisoners to die trapped inside their cells and even firing on others when they tried to escape.
As bodies were pulled out of the prison complex on today, relatives of victims, survivors and experts said massive overcrowding, guards' negligence and a failed justice system were to blame for the disaster, which killed many inmates who had not even been convicted.
Unable to escape the inferno that tore through Comayagua National Penitentiary on Tuesday night, terrified prisoners died screaming to be let out of their cells. Rosendo Sanchez, a convicted murderer serving a 10-year sentence, awoke as the blaze started.
He escaped his building and says he saw guards firing at other inmates trying to escape."It was hell here, seeing your friends, people you have known well burn alive," he said.
Sanchez claimed the fire brigade did not come into the prison for more than half an hour.
The country's director of police intelligence, Elder Madrid, said the fire broke out in block six during a fight over a mattress between two inmates, one of whom set it on fire. All but four of more than 100 prisoners in the block died, he said.
But some victims' relatives said the government had been grossly negligent or had even planned the blaze.
Some of the 850 or so inmates of the overcrowded jail managed to force their way to safety through the tin roofs of the prison, a dark maze-like structure with narrow open-air hallways lined with brick walls.
However, 359 of the prisoners never found their way out, according to the attorney general's office. The police said some of those presumed dead may have escaped.
Claudio Saenz, a social worker who visits the jail, said the dead included people who were not even given a proper trial.
"Many were not convicted and have been here two or three years and they were not able to be released because the Honduran justice system is really slow," he said. Prison chaplain Reynaldo Moncada said that probably only around half of the inmates had been sentenced by a court.
Condemnation of the prison authorities spread as far as the local fire brigade chief, who said they had stopped his crews from entering the burning prison for half an hour.
"These people in the prisons have their protocols, and while these are going on, they don't let anybody in," Jaime Omar Silva told the El Tiempo newspaper.
Throughout the night, groups of police and soldiers dragged out the charred remains of convicts in black body bags, throwing them onto a pile outside.
Already struggling with violence and poverty, Honduras has struggled to maintain law and order since a coup in 2009 divided the already troubled Central American nation.
At more than 80 homicides per 100,000 people in 2009, Honduras's murder rate is 16 times that of the United States, according to a United Nations study.
Reuters