QUITO (Reuters) -Ecuador has moved 300 high-risk inmates to a new maximum-security prison on the country's coast, including former Vice President Jorge Glas, President Daniel Noboa said on Monday, a day after 31 prisoners were killed in a riot in the south.
The transfer to the Encuentro Prison in Santa Elena province is part of Noboa's plan to weaken criminal gangs that operate inside Ecuador's overcrowded jails, where hundreds of inmates have died in clashes in recent years.
"The first 300 most dangerous inmates have already been transferred to the Encuentro Prison," Noboa said on X, sharing photos of prisoners sitting on the floor, dressed in orange uniforms with shaved heads, surrounded by soldiers.
"Crime wanted to challenge Ecuador and start its campaign. Today, Ecuador responded with action," he added.
In a separate post on X, Noboa shared two photos showing Glas in the new prison, without mentioning his name.
Glas's lawyer said on social media that posting images of the former vice president in custody, accompanied by expressions of mockery, "constitutes a direct violation of the binding order of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights."
In June, an Ecuadorian court sentenced Glas to 13 additional years in prison for misusing public funds allocated to rebuild areas affected by a 2016 earthquake. He was already serving convictions in two previous corruption cases.
The new facility has capacity for more than 700 people. Ecuador's prison system is currently 30% over capacity, according to the national prison agency SNAI.
Interior Minister John Reimberg earlier on Monday said Sunday's violence broke out after inmates learned they were going to be transferred.
"The party's over for them, the orders from the prisons... to generate violence and chaos are over," Reimberg told a radio station. "Today they are in cells designed to prevent them from having any contact or communication with absolutely anyone."
At least 31 inmates died on Sunday at the Machala prison, in southwestern Ecuador, in a clash between the Los Lobos and Sao Box gangs, the latter a splinter group of the former vying for control of the prison. Government data showed 27 victims were suffocated by their rivals.
During frequent operations in Ecuador's 36 prisons, authorities have seized firearms, ammunition, cell phones, fighting roosters, and even pigs.
(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia; Writing by Natalia Siniawski, Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
