Honduras to build 20,000-inmate ‘megaprison’ as part of gang crackdown
Al Jazeera
President Xiomara Castro says new measures including ‘terrorist’ designations for gang members are in response to public complaints about rising violence.
Authorities in Honduras have announced a series of measures aimed at tackling organised crime, including the construction of a 20,000-capacity “megaprison”, as well as “terrorist” designations and collective trials for members of gangs.
In a late-night televised address to the nation, President Xiomara Castro said on Friday the “plan of solutions against crime” was in response to a “security emergency” and public complaints about increasing violence.
Flanked by members of Honduras’s National Defense and Security Council, Castro said the armed forces and police should be deployed to “urgently execute interventions across parts of the country with the highest incidences of gang crimes, such as murders for hire, drug and firearm trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and money laundering”.
The plan to build the 20,000-inmate “Emergency Reclusion Centre” in the sparsely populated area between the eastern departments of Olancha and Gracias a Dios will massively expand Honduras’s current prison capacity.
