Cries for Justice Amid the Tears in Honduras
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Correction Appended
COMAYAGUA, Honduras -- YasmÃn Castro's last words to her son before the policemen on motorcycles took him to jail in November were "I won't sleep until we get you out."
She hired a lawyer to help dispute the charges that her son, Octavio Ruiz, 21, had assisted gang members in a robbery. She stormed into the local prosecutor's office to demand his release. She put up posters -- "A mother needs your help," she wrote -- asking witnesses to speak out.
Ms. Castro hoped that her son might soon get a trial, but he never did. Mr. Ruiz was one of at least 350 people killed on Tuesday night as a fire tore through the Comayagua national prison, one of the deadliest disasters in Honduran history.
In some parts of Latin America, prisoners like Mr. Ruiz are held on suspicion of aiding drug cartels and gangs and told to wait for their chance at justice. But with corruption plaguing many judicial systems and prosecutors overwhelmed with drug cases, many who are accused of crimes spend far longer than they expect in legal limbo, leaving prisons like Comayagua's grossly overcrowded.
While Mr. Ruiz was held for months, human rights groups say others are sometimes imprisoned for more than a year, and many are not formally charged while they wait.
Across Honduras, only 53 percent of prisoners have been convicted, according to government statistics released in September. In the Comayagua prison, fewer than half, 397 of 858 inmates, had been.
Honduran families on Thursday deplored what they called a double injustice: not only had their parents or cousins or children been killed in a horrific disaster, but they had also been denied a chance to vindicate themselves.
"How can we go on treating human beings like this?" asked Ms. Castro, standing outside the gates of the Comayagua prison. "Where is the sense of humanity?"
A day after Honduran officials blamed a prisoner's setting fire to his mattress for the conflagration, the authorities backtracked somewhat, saying that it was still the most likely explanation but that investigators had not ruled out the possibility of an electrical problem. Specialists from Chile and the United States arrived to help investigate, and an initial report on the cause is expected next week. Some Hondurans, however, were skeptical of the official explanation and criticized the government's response to the fire amid reports that many prison officials were absent when it began. Some critics called for privatizing the country's penitentiaries.
First Published February 17, 2012 12:01 am
