Buenos Aires, Argentina – Scores of inmates at Magdalena Prison in Buenos Aires staged a protest that ended in setting fire to a jail block that sent five to the penitentiary prison, EFE learned Saturday from police sources.
According to spokespersons, the fire “was quickly put out by the officers, so that no serious consequences ensued,” while the inmates affected by “pulmonary pathologies” were sent back to their cells “in a few hours and in good health.”
The protest took place in the same institution where 33 prisoners died last October in a jailhouse riot in which inmates set fire to mattresses and bedcovers.
Last night’s protest broke out when a group of inmates in Block 3 started throwing burning rags and clothing to protest the confiscation by the Penitentiary Service of a 50-liter barrel of an alcoholic beverage that the prisoners had fermented themselves.
Minutes later, the protest was repeated in Blocks 4, 5 and 6, but officials of the Penitentiary Service “managed to normalize the situation immediately,” the sources said.
The incident is one more in a series of outbreaks of prison violence in Argentina this year, some with fatal consequences.
