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A woman cries while she shows pictures of her son, one of the inmates killed during the Honduras prison fire on February 16. The fire swept through the overcrowded prison, killing more than 350 people some of whom were never convicted. (Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images)
A report on Thursday found that many of the inmates who were housed in the prison that burned down and killed hundreds of people on Wednesday were not convicted, or in some cases, not even charged.
At least half of the 856 prisoners housed in the overcrowded Comayagua prison farm were awaiting trial or were being held as suspected members of a gang, The Associated Press reported, citing an internal government report, which it obtained from the United Nations.
Meanwhile, officials on Thursday confirmed that 358 inmates were killed in the blaze, which occurred overnight on Tuesday. Some survivors said that they climbed the walls of the facility to break through the sheet metal roofing to escape.
“I woke up with all the screaming from my fellow inmates, who were already breaking the wood and zinc ceiling,” a survivor said, according to the BBC.
AP found in the report that prisoners only needed to have one simple tattoo to be imprisoned under Honduras’s anti-gang laws, a practice which is condemned by the United Nations. It also said that prisoners are allowed less than $1 per day for food and have no medical or mental health care.
Honduras, with the world’s highest murder rate, holds 13,000 inmates inside a prison system meant to hold 8,000.