Honduras Prison Fire: International Forensics Teams To Help Probe

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Countries are reaching out to Honduras after its deadly prison fire, sending medical aid and forensic doctors, with the United States dispatching an investigative team to help find the cause of the blaze.

Mexico and Chile are sending forensic experts to help identify the 355 dead, many of whom were burned beyond recognition in the inferno at the Comayagua prison north of Honduras' capital. France and Spain are offering medical aid for survivors of the deadliest prison fire in a century.

The fire that began late Tuesday night exposed a dysfunctional and underfunded prison system with overcrowded facilities, and insufficient staff. Honduran President Porfirio Lobo issued a plea for international assistance in carrying out a thorough investigation "to determine beyond any doubt what led to this tragedy and determine responsibility."

The U.S. State Department said Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigators arrived Thursday in Honduras. The team includes forensic chemists, explosives enforcement officers and dogs that can sniff out explosives and accelerants.

"The purpose of the mission is to establish how the fire started," the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.

Five forensic doctors who work for the Mexican Attorney General's Office arrived Thursday to help identify the dead, that country's Foreign Relations Department said in a statement.

The department said Mexico also sent medical supplies and medicine to treat burn victims after Lobo requested the aid in a telephone conversation with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

Chile announced plans to send a team of 14 experts to also help identify the dead. The team helped in the aftermath of a fire that killed 81 in a Chilean prison and was set during fighting between rival gangs in 2010.

France and Spain have sent medical supplies to help treat survivors, and Spain offered to send a police team to help with the investigation.


Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary-general of the Organization of American States, said he has asked the president of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission to send a delegation to Honduras to investigate the fire. He expressed "deep shock at the dramatic events."

Israel's ambassador to Honduras, Eliau Lopes, said he planned to meet with Lobo on Friday to present a proposal by an Israeli company to build four modern, safe, high-security prisons.

Lopes said the cost of the project is high but "it can be achieved with international aid."

"We are talking about facilities where no one will escape, where there won't be fires," he said.

19 Febr 2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/18/honduras-prison-fire-international_n_1286315.html

Funerals begin for Honduras fire victims

Forensic experts from seven other Latin American countries are joining the Honduran team identifying the bodies.

Hondurans are burying victims of one of the world's worst jail fires as they search for answers about what caused the disaster.

On Saturday, the death toll rose to 358 after two severely-burned inmates died in a hospital.

Several funerals took place in various towns around the country Friday after authorities released the bodies of the first 24 victims of a horrific inferno that has rattled this Central American nation.

"This was a barbaric crime," said Trinidad Varela, who bid a final farewell to her 28-year-old son, Edwin Ortega, in the town of Talanga, northwest of the capital.

"We cannot leave it just like that."

Four days after the blaze swept through the overcrowded Comayagua jail - which had held double its capacity with 852 inmates - the cause of the fire still was unclear.

A US team from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrived late Thursday to investigate and Chilean experts also searched the jail.

About 60 per cent of the prisoners in Comayagua had not yet been sentenced.

In the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, exhausted families waited for their relatives' bodies, kept at a distance because of a strong odour from the morgue.

Forensic experts from seven other Latin American countries are joining the Honduran team identifying the bodies.

Under tents set up outside the morgue, the team drew blood samples from relatives of the victims for DNA testing.

"There are bodies that can only be identified with DNA testing," coroner Antonieta Zuniga said after explaining that many bodies were charred beyond recognition.

Lindolfo Hernandez, brother of one of the victims, said: "They told me that it would be difficult to give me my brother's body because it is in a bad state, but I'll stay here until they've done it."

His brother, jailed for 10 years for rape, was due to be released in two months.

Delmi Matute could not understand the fate of her husband's remains.

"We have been waiting here four days but they have not given him to me. My husband died of smoke inhalation, he should be easy to identify, and they still have not given him to me," she sobbed as she sat with loved ones.

Honduran President Porfirio Lobo suspended top officials from the country's prison system and called for foreign assistance in the investigations, amid accusations that authorities had been overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster.

He pledged compensation for the victims' families.

Human rights groups and witnesses questioned the role of the guards and the authorities, suggesting negligence or even premeditation.

The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights said in a statement that firefighters arrived too late, the prison director was absent and guards failed to open cell doors to save lives.

The Committee of Families of Missing Prisoners expressed concern about a complaint from a non-identified prisoner who told local media the fire was started by police to cover up a planned escape.

National police spokesman Hector Ivan Mejia denied the suggestion and added that no prisoners had escaped.

But President Lobo acknowledged that some inmates caught up in the fire did escape, without saying how many.

Besides those killed in the blaze, "other inmates fled, but they will be caught," Lobo told reporters at a press conference.

He also ordered a safety review of the nation's 23 other jails.

Leftist opposition parties blamed the blaze on "criminal negligence."

Some 500 inmates who survived the fire remained inside the jail in a wing that was not affected.

"I don't want to stay in this prison," said Marco Valladares, who communicated with his wife by mobile phone from inside the jail.

"It's cursed. We knew for a long time that the fire would happen."

Another survivor, Hector Martinez, said: "The facilities are damaged. I'm afraid."

Honduras, which has the world's highest murder rate - 80 per 100,000 people according to the United Nations - has 24 detention centres with a capacity of 8000. The prison population is currently around 13,000.

19 Febr 2012
http://news.msn.co.nz/worldnews/8422053/funerals-begin-for-honduras-victims