LA PAZ: Nearly all the 31 inmates killed in a battle and fire in an eastern Bolivia prison last week were awaiting trial, most for minor offenses, an official said Tuesday.
Guards apparently allowed inmates in a maximum security cellblock to storm another cellblock, housing mainly people being held under preventative detention, the chief of the penitentiary system said.
Llanos said inmates had identified the guards who opened the doors for the attack, which ended in a huge fire that destroyed part of the prison, killing 31 inmates.
Llanos said most of the victims died of asphyxiation. He said 29 of the dead had not yet been convicted, and were being held under preventative detention.
"That only two had been sentenced is terrible," Gregorio Lanza, an official with the Public Defenders Office who visited the prison after the incident.
Lanza questioned how it was that prisoners awaiting trial were exposed to hardened maximum security prisoners.
He said it appeared to be a set up designed to extract bribes from prisoners eager to be transferred to safer holding areas.
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