Report: Most Honduras fire inmates awaited trial

Thursday, February 16, 2012

COMAYAGUA, Honduras (AP) — The prisoners whose scorched bodies were carried out piece by piece this morning from a charred Honduran prison had been locked inside an overcrowded penitentiary where most inmates had never been charged, let alone convicted, according to an internal Honduran government report obtained by The Associated Press.

More than half of the 856 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, according to a report sent by the Honduran government this month to the United Nations.

A fire started by an inmate tore through the prison 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.

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.

From the time firefighters received a call at 10:59 pm local time, the rescue was marred by human error and conditions that made the prison ripe for catastrophe.

According to the report, obtained exclusively by the AP, 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 — the case at the time of the fire.

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. The UN condemns the practice as a violation of international law.

National prison system director Danilo Orellana declined to comment on the supervision or the crowded conditions in Comayagua, a prison farm where inmates grew corn and beans. He referred an AP reporter to the commander of the prison police, who said comment would have to come from his public affairs office, which did not respond to an AP request late yesterday.

President Porfirio Lobo yesterday suspended Orellana and other top prison officials.