Distraught relatives of 68 people killed in a riot and fire in the cells of a Venezuelan police station demanded explanations Thursday, and rights groups and opposition politicians blamed leftist President Nicolas Maduro for overcrowding in the country’s notoriously violent jails.

There was a shootout with police at one point during Wednesday’s disaster in the city of Valencia, some inmates’ relatives and an injured inmate recounted. The badly burned survivor told a harrowing tale of seeing friends die before he managed to escape.

Deadly riots are common in Venezuela’s lawless prisons, where inmates often openly wield machine guns and use drugs. But the death toll from the riot and fire in Valencia, a run-down city that was once a thriving industrial hub, was the worst from such an incident in more than two decades.

2 visitors among dead

The public prosecutor put the number of people who died at 68, including two women who were visiting inmates.

Authorities had little comment on the disaster by Thursday afternoon. Maduro tweeted messages about the Easter holidays and his recent meeting with Hollywood actor Danny Glover but did not refer to the Valencia deaths.

The governor of Carabobo state, Rafael Lacava, issued a statement promising to investigate the incident, support bereaved families and improve prison conditions. The communique did not provide specifics, however, and the opposition slammed the central government for its silence.

“In the face of tragedy and pain over what happened in Carabobo, the government’s silence and indolence indicates it is looking for excuses to hide its obvious responsibility,” said Omar Barboza, president of the opposition-led Congress.

Security forces drew condemnation from many Venezuelans when they used tear gas on Wednesday to disperse wailing families who were demanding information outside the Valencia police station.

On Thursday, the scene in the city, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) west of Caracas, was quiet, mournful and desperate as about 100 largely poor Venezuelans waited to collect bodies or to verify that their jailed relatives were alive.

Shootout, panic

Homemaker Daniela Pastrana, her eyes bloodshot from tears and fatigue, said she had been trying since Wednesday night to identify the body of her husband, Endruver Torres. He had called her in a panic on Wednesday morning, saying there was a shootout in the cells, she said.

“We were on the phone and they were saying, ‘[Police are] shooting at us, they’re throwing gasoline at us,’ ” said Pastrana, 32, who is expecting her fourth child.

She said authorities had told her the fire was sparked by a short circuit. “We know it wasn’t a short circuit,” Pastrana said angrily.

A representative for police in Carabobo state told Reuters he was not authorized to comment.

Three relatives of inmates confirmed Pastrana’s version of a shootout, as did surviving prisoner Yorman Trejo.

Speaking to Reuters from a hospital bed on Thursday, Trejo recounted being awakened at 7 a.m. Wednesday by gunshots he said were being exchanged by police officers and prisoners. A fire broke out, too, spreading quickly in the overcrowded cells strung with hammocks.

The slim 28-year old, who had been in jail for a year, accused of theft, was badly burned and said he saw most of his friends die before he escaped through a hole in the wall.

“It hurts. … But thanks to God I am alive,” said Trejo, whose face and arms were scarred, as his wife blew flies off his face.

‘Savage’ problem

Prison violence has been an issue in Venezuela for decades. Late leftist leader Hugo Chavez once described the problem as the world’s most “savage” and promised to clean it up.

But opposition politicians said the disaster was another sign of the ruling socialists’ incompetence in a country that is deep in economic crisis and is plagued with food shortages, hyperinflation and rampant crime.

“The only culprit is the government, which keeps a huge quantity of prisoners crammed together in police office cells for a long time in inhumane conditions,” said opposition lawmaker Yajaira Forero.
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Brazil federal police arrested several people Thursday with links to President Michel Temer who is suspected of accepting bribes for the awarding of contracts to companies operating at the country’s largest port.

The arrests were authorized by Supreme Court Justice Luis Roberto Barroso, who is overseeing the Sao Paulo Santos port investigation.

The attorney general’s office said in a statement that arrests were made at Santos as part of an investigation into alleged corruption involving a decree signed by Temer regulating Brazil’s ports.

The decree Temer signed last May extended contracts for companies operating at the port from 25 to 35 years with an option of renewal for up to 70 years.

Temer has denied any wrongdoing in the awarding of port contracts, and his Cabinet secretary told reporters the president would clear his name.

Rodrimar, one of the companies at the center of the probe, confirmed in a statement that its president, Antonio Celso Grecco, was arrested and that police searched its headquarters in Santos. The company said that in accordance with the warrant, Celso Grecco could be held for five days.

Rodrimar said it has never accepted official favors and that the decree did not benefit any company, adding that the company and Celso Grecco were surprised by Thursday’s move.

Brazilian media reported that others arrested included: Jose Yunes, a longtime former aide to Temer; Joao Batista Lima, a retired military police colonel with reportedly close ties to Temer; and Wagner Rossi, an agriculture minister in a previous government who once ran Codesp, the entity that administers the port.

Attorneys for the suspects said their clients have denied any wrongdoing. Some of them called their clients’ detention “unacceptable” and/or “illegal.”
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Rioting and a fire in the cells of a Venezuelan police station in the central city of Valencia killed 68 people on Wednesday, according to the government and witnesses.

Families hoping for news outside the police station were dispersed with tear gas and authorities did not give information until late into the evening.

The State Prosecutors Office guarantees to deepen investigations to immediately clarify what happened in these painful events that have left dozens of Venezuelan families in mourning, said Chief Prosecutor Tarek William Saab on Twitter.

Venezuelan prisons are notoriously overcrowded and filled with weapons and drugs. Riots leaving dozens dead are not uncommon.

State official Jesus Santander said the state of Carabobo was in mourning after the incident in the city of Valencia. “Forensic doctors are determining the number of fatalities,” Santander said. A policeman was shot in the leg and was in a stable condition and firefighters had extinguished the flames, he said.

Many Venezuelan prisons are lawless and have been for decades. Prisoners often openly wield machine guns and grenades, use drugs and leave guards powerless. 

“There are people who are inside those dungeons (…) and the authorities do not know they exist because they do not dare to enter,” said Humberto Prado, a local prisons rights activist.
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The Trump administration is hopeful it can reach a deal on a new North American Free Trade Agreement before the July 1 presidential election in Mexico and U.S. midterm congressional elections in November.

“I’d say I’m hopeful — I think we are making progress. I think that all three parties want to move forward. We have a short window, because of elections and things beyond our control,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told CNBC television Wednesday.

But Canada’s chief negotiator was far less optimistic.

“We have yet to see exactly what the U.S. means by an agreement in principle,” Steve Verheul told reporters Wednesday in Ottawa. There are still “significant gaps,” Verheul said. “We can accomplish quite a bit between now and then, and we’ve made it clear to the U.S. that we will be prepared to negotiate at any time, any place, for as long as they are prepared to negotiate, but so far we haven’t really seen that process get going,” he said.

Officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico are supposed to meet in the United States next month for the eighth round of talks, although Washington has not announced dates yet.
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Authorities were investigating a riot and fire at a Venezuelan police station Wednesday where relatives said dozens of detainees were being kept in squalid conditions and were feared dead. 

Officials offered no information on what happened or whether there were any casualties, and police clashed with relatives who gathered outside the station, demanding information on their loved ones.

Officers in riot gear formed a line with plastic shields blocking access to the brick building and at one point launched tear gas to disperse the crowd of screaming men and women in Valencia, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Caracas. 

“I don’t know if my son is dead or alive!” cried Aida Parra, who said she last saw her son a day before, when she went to deliver him food. “They haven’t told me anything.” 

A Window to Freedom, a nonprofit group that monitors conditions at Venezuela’s jails, said preliminary but unconfirmed information indicated the riot began when an armed detainee shot an officer in the leg. Shortly after that a fire broke out, with flames growing quickly as the blaze spread to mattresses in the cells, it said. Rescuers apparently had to break a hole through a wall to free some of the prisoners inside.

Photos shared by the group showed prisoners being taken out on stretchers, their limbs frozen in awkward positions as skin peeled off.

Overcrowding called common issue

A Window to Freedom’s director, Carlos Nieto Palma, said officials should be held accountable for failing to address deteriorating conditions in police station jails. The group said overcrowding has become common throughout the country as detainees are kept long past customary brief holding periods before being sent to other larger jails before trial or freed.

“It’s grave and alarming,” Nieto Palma said. “What happened today in Carabobo [state] is a sign of that.”

Outside the police station, some relatives buried their hands in their faces as tears streamed down their cheeks. Others had to be held up with the support of friends and family as they collapsed in despair. Still others wept quietly and clutched their hands in prayer.

Nearby, National Guard troops wearing bulletproof vests and carrying rifles across their backs walked in and out of the station. Firetrucks and ambulances stood outside, and unused stretchers leaned against a wall.

Opposition lawmaker Juan Miguel Matheus demanded that the pro-government leader of Carabobo state inform relatives about what had happened.

“The desperation of relatives should not be played with,” he said.

Clashes between prisoners and guards are not uncommon in Venezuela. Inmates are frequently able to obtain weapons and drugs with the help of corrupt guards, and heavily armed groups control cellblock fiefdoms.
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The Ecuadorean government said Wednesday that it had cut off Julian Assange’s ability to communicate outside its embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has lived for more than five years.

The government said it stopped Assange from communicating with the outside world to prevent him from meddling in other countries’ affairs. 

The move came two days after Assange questioned, on Twitter, Britain’s accusation that Russia was behind the March 4 poisoning of a Russian former double agent in Salisbury, England.

Assange was granted asylum in Ecuador’s embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning about allegations of sex crimes, which he has denied committing.

The Swedish investigation was closed almost one year ago, but Assange, who was on bail when he entered the embassy, faces arrest by British authorities for violating his bail terms if he steps outside.

A British judge refused to end legal proceedings against Assange last month for jumping bail. The judge said Assange “wants to impose his terms on the course of justice.” 
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Peru’s new president fell short of reaffirming that the Andean country will ban Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro from attending a regional summit Peru is hosting next month, saying on Tuesday that he would leave the matter to top diplomats.

Martin Vizcarra, who had been Peru’s vice president, abruptly became president last week after Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned amid growing graft allegations.

A former Wall Street banker who once held U.S. citizenship, Kuczynski had been one of Maduro’s most outspoken critics, deeming him a “dictator” and barring him from the Summit of the Americas that Peru will host on April 13-14.

Maduro vowed to attend the summit anyway, and his loyalists exulted over Kuczynski’s downfall with a fireworks display last week.

But Vizcarra declined to weigh in on the dispute as he focuses on building support across Peru by promising to refocus the government’s attention on domestic problems that had been neglected while Kuczynski struggled to remain in power.

After returning from a coastal region still reeling from severe floods last year, Vizcarra was asked at a news conference what he thought about Maduro’s being banned from the summit.

“Our foreign policy is so delicate we must leave it in the hands of specialists,” Vizcarra told journalists at the presidential palace. “The foreign affairs ministry is taking the corresponding decisions that we’ll support.”

The comment appeared to signal a more hands-off approach to foreign policy.

A spokesman in the foreign affairs ministry said its position of barring Maduro was unchanged, but noted that Vizcarra had not yet sat down to talk with top diplomatic officials.

Vizcarra promised a “completely new” Cabinet upon taking office on Friday, but has yet to name his foreign minister or other appointments. He said he would unveil his Cabinet next Monday.

Vizcarra said there would no changes to the agenda of the Summit of the Americas, which will celebrate “democratic governance against corruption” in a host country where three out of the four past presidents are subjects in graft probes.

U.S. President Donald Trump and other leaders in the Americas plan to attend the summit.

Vizcarra noted that various heads of state, starting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, had called him after he took office to reconfirm their attendance.

“We think the event in Peru is going to be a success,” Vizcarra said.

The former governor of a small mining region, Vizcarra served as Peru’s ambassador to Canada, as well as vice president, before he was called home to replace Kuczynski.
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Costa Rica’s ruling party presidential candidate says he will slash the country’s growing fiscal deficit by half if he wins Sunday’s run-off election, a contest in which economic concerns have taken a back seat to a debate over gay marriage.

Center-left hopeful Carlos Alvarado Quesada of the ruling Citizens’ Action Party, 38, trails in some polls behind conservative evangelical Fabricio Alvarado Munoz, while others show the pair running neck-and-neck.

Alvarado Quesada, who unlike his opponent supports gay marriage, told Reuters on Monday he aims to shrink the deficit from 6.2 percent to 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2022.

The deficit is set to grow by one percentage point next year, authorities and credit rating agencies have warned.

The current administration, where Alvarado Quesada once worked in the Social Development and Labor ministries, was blocked by a divided congress over the last four years from passing measures to create a value-added tax (VAT), cut public salaries and tax capital gains.

Fitch downgraded Costa Rica’s rating from stable to negative in January, citing “institutional gridlock” that has thwarted fiscal reform and warning that more delays will raise risks to growth.

However, debt has now increased so much that parties previously opposed to tax reform may support it to avoid further economic malaise, Alvarado Quesada said.

“The competitive advantage I have is that time has run out,” he said in an interview at an organic market in the capital.

Lawmakers have been discussing a 13 percent VAT rate, more modest than an originally proposed 15 percent, but he said that was “not enough.”

His opponent Alvarado Munoz has yet to present concrete proposals to stem the growing deficit and crime rate, instead focusing on opposition to gay marriage, sex education and abortion.

Maintain floating system

Alvarado Quesada says he opposes the export sector’s demands to devalue the colon currency and wants to maintain the floating exchange rate while making central bank interventions more transparent.

But he pledged to support agricultural and industrial sectors by negotiating better terms for joining the Pacific Alliance trade pact with Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Peru.

In the fight against record crime, Alvarado Quesada rejected his rival’s “firm hand” stance, saying it would aggravate violence. He also criticized President Luis Guillermo Solis’ handling of corruption cases that have rocked the government.

He repeated his support for gay marriage, contrasting with his opponent who gained widespread support in the conservative country after rejecting an Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling to legalize same-sex unions.

“I did not hide my position for political gain. I was honest with citizens (even though it was unpopular),” Alvarado Quesada said.

However, the novelist and ex-rock singer’s anti-abortion stance highlights the limits to his progressive agenda.

Alvarado Quesada is proposing to develop specific regulations to better enforce a 50-year-old law allowing a pregnancy to be terminated only if the mother’s health is at risk. He said this will better protect women who are often unsure of their rights due to the stigma of abortion.
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Thousands of soldiers and police officers entered a complex of favelas in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday in the largest show of force by the military since it took control of security in Brazil’s second-largest city last month.

Rio is experiencing a wave of violence nearly two years after it hosted the 2016 Olympics. The games were preceded by a major push to improve security, but safety has since deteriorated dramatically as drug trafficking gangs fight for control of swaths of the city. Militias formed by current and former police officers are also vying for influence.

As a result, there are frequent gunbattles in marginalized areas, and shootouts have occasionally spilled into the wealthier areas along the city’s famous beachfront.

On Tuesday, 3,400 soldiers and 500 police entered the Lins Complex. The military command said forces were creating a perimeter around the area to prevent suspects from fleeing and were clearing the streets of obstructions placed by gangs. Soldiers walked the streets, and armored vehicles rolled through the neighborhood.

By evening, the military command said 24 people had been detained. The force also seized three guns, about 22 pounds (10 kilograms) of marijuana and a “vast quantity” of powder and crack cocaine, along with several cars and motorcycles suspected of being used for drug trafficking, the command said.

While the military’s intervention in Rio has come under criticism for yielding few results in the month since it began, Julieta Goncalves, a resident of Lins, said she already felt safer.

“We can come here to the market with more security,” she said as she bought provisions Tuesday. “There are police protecting us.”

But Jorge de Souza, another resident, said morning patrols were nice, but he would like to see more troops on the street at night.

“At night, this place here is dangerous,” he said.
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Peru’s new president, Martin Vizcarra, promised to rev up government spending on infrastructure and housing destroyed by severe floods more than a year ago, criticizing delays under his recently-toppled predecessor.

In his first trip outside of Lima since taking office on Friday, Vizcarra said that in the past year, the government has only spent 10 percent of the 25 billion soles ($7.8 billion) needed for the overall reconstruction effort.

“If we continue like this, we’re going to finish rebuilding in 10 years,” Vizcarra told residents of a small town in the coastal desert region of Piura, where flooding destroyed scores of homes. “We can’t wait that long.”

Hundreds of people continue to live in tents in Piura and other regions along Peru’s northern coast since a surprise warming of Pacific waters unleashed deadly downpours in early 2017.

Vizcarra has sought to distance himself from the unpopular government of former president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a former banker who resigned last week in the face of near-certain impeachment on graft allegations.

Vizcarra, Kuczynski’s vice president, was sworn in on Friday.

But most Peruvians could not name Vizcarra in an Ipsos poll two weeks ago, and the 55-year-old former governor of a mining region must now build support across Peru while repairing relations with the opposition-ruled Congress as a massive graft scandal continues to roil the country.

On Tuesday, Vizcarra greeted residents in Piura who lost their homes to the floods last year and promised local officials he would work closely with them to ensure their needs were met.

Vizcarra said laws must be changed to make sure it does not take the government between six and nine months to award public work contracts.

“We can’t create expectations that everything will be done in the short-term, but we have to set deadlines that are respected,” Vizcarra told cheering crowds.

Shares in construction conglomerate Grana y Montero rose more than 9 percent on Tuesday amid expectations Vizcarra would oversee a revival in construction.

The center-right government of Kuczynski was credited with leading a rapid emergency effort when the floods hit but was later criticized for not following through with rapid rebuilding.

Kuczynski has said the opposition party that controls Congress did not allow him to govern freely and has denied the graft allegations that led to his downfall.

Vizcarra has yet to unveil the “completely new” Cabinet that he has promised to form, but said would do so by Monday of next week.
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