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The Justice of Honduras declared that This Tuesday guilty, in the repetition of the trial, four former prison officials for the death of 360 people during a fire in the Comayagua Penal Farm recorded on February 14, 2012, reported the official. the Public Ministry.
The former director of the prison Wilmer Obdulio López and the person in charge of the keys of the penitentiary, José Víctor Mejía, were sentenced in the new trial for “360 manslaughter and the violation of the duties of the officials,” indicated Víctor Mejía. the Public Ministry in a statement.
For their part, the person in charge of security at the Granja Penal, Rito Yánez Lico, and the guard commander, Santos Soriano López, were sentenced for violating the duties of officials, since they were responsible for the protection of the prisoners, he pointed out.
The Honduran court On July 17, the individualization hearing for the sentence and sentence will be held, in which the Public Ministry will request a hearing. The minimum sentence for the crime of homicide, which adds up —for the 360 victims— 1,800 years in prison for the former director of the prison and the person in charge of its keys.
Meanwhile, the crime of violence due to the duties of public officials does not carry a custodial sentence.
The fire at the Comayagua Penal Farm, located about 80 kilometers from Tegucigalpa , was recorded between midnight on February 14 and early morning on February 15, 2012 due to accidental causes, according to the official report of the investigation carried out by the Honduran Public Ministry and a team of experts from the United States.< /p>
At the time of the incident, the prison had 852 inmates, well above its capacity, 352 of whom were reached by the flames, in addition to a woman who was visiting her husband at the scene.
Seven other inmates died at the Teaching Hospital in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, due to the seriousness of the injuries they sustained during the fire.
During the event, those sentenced were in charge of “safeguarding the lives of those deprived of liberty, but they focused on securing the perimeter and not on fulfilling their responsibility to ensure the well-being of the inmates, an action that derived in 360 fatalities”, he specified. The Public Ministry.
The four defendants had been acquitted of criminal responsibility in the first trial, held in 2017, for which the Honduran Special Prosecutor for Human Rights A cassation appeal was filed against the ruling, which was revoked by the Criminal Chamber of the Honduran Supreme repetition of the judicial process.
Most of the thirty prisons that make up the Honduran penitentiary system operate in obsolete buildings, some more than a century old, and in total They are overcrowded, as they house some 22,000 inmates, when their maximum capacity is 8,000, and less than half of the prisoners have been sentenced, according to official figures.