Feed aggregator

A year on from the first event in Ghana, organisers have signed an agreement to help find a host city for the next edition.

Alexander Zverev scheitert an den US Open zwar an Taylor Fritz. Doch im Viertelfinal-Spiel gegen den Amerikaner sorgt der Deutsche für den bisherigen Punkt des Turniers – und jubelt dabei ausgiebig.

The Nigerian is heading to Turkish club Galatasaray on loan, but why was it so hard for the African Player of the Year to find a move after falling out with Napoli?

The Nigerian is heading to Turkish club Galatasaray on loan, but why was it so hard for the African Player of the Year to find a move after falling out with Napoli?

Euronews: Egyelőre simán zajlik a mobil nélküli próbarend a tesztben résztevő iskolákban.

Fürst Albert II. von Monaco steht unter Druck: Eine Korruptionsaffäre zwingt ihn, seine engsten Berater zu entlassen. Prinzessin Caroline und ihre Familie haben ein Machtwort gesprochen, um die Krise zu bewältigen.

Court proceedings from the Irish Data Protection Commission against X are officially over as of Wednesday (4 September), after the company agreed to permanently stop processing some personal data collected in the EU to train artificial intelligence (AI).

L’Algérie redéfinie son paysage énergétique depuis quelques années en misant sur les énergies renouvelables. Désormais, elle accélère sa transition énergétique avec des investissements considérables. L’objectif […]

L’article Énergies renouvelables : l’Algérie met le cap sur 4 000 MW avec des projets ambitieux est apparu en premier sur .

Mossoró prison, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, in Brazil, is one of the five maximum security prisons in that country. Credit: Mjsp

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Sep 4 2024 (IPS)

Invoking the fight against terrorists and sending those who can be charged with this crime to new maximum security prisons are increasingly emerging in the toolbox of Latin American leaders who want to show an iron fist against criminals and opponents.

Renata Segura, head of the regional programme of the Brussels-based think-tank International Crisis Group, wrote on her X-media account that “the fascination of Latin American presidents with maximum security prisons is spreading like wildfire.”

This attraction is present among presidents of opposing political persuasions, although most of them are united by the neo-populism of their policies and actions.

Venezuela is the most recent case, where president Nicolás Maduro, whose re-election in the 28 July elections sparked an outbreak of street protests, ordered two prisons to be set up as maximum security jails to hold some 2,000 protesters arrested and accused of terrorism.“The fascination of Latin American presidents with maximum security prisons is spreading like wildfire”: Renata Segura.

Argentine president Javier Milei accused opponents who recently demonstrated against him in Buenos Aires of the same offence, while Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa ordered the construction of a maximum security prison and a prison ship for criminals accused of terrorism.

The top regional reference is president Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who under a state of emergency that has lasted more than two years has detained 80,000 people, mostly accused of terrorism as members of large criminal gangs or maras.

The Bukele government built a mega-prison, the Terrorism Containment Center (Cecot), with capacity for 40,000 inmates who are subjected to trial and detention conditions that violate human rights, according to international humanitarian organisations that observe the process.

Segura told IPS from New York that “the recent announcements of the construction of maximum security prisons are most likely inspired by the measures taken by president Bukele, who has been quite successful in reducing insecurity.”

She acknowledged that the Salvadoran ruler “has high levels of popularity, despite massive human rights violations in that country.”

Indeed, “he ended up putting two percent of El Salvador’s adult population behind bars, mostly without due process, and with serious human rights violations,” said Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, president of the non-governmental Washington Office on Latin America (Wola).

Under this state of emergency, “at least 261 people have already been killed, and we must remember that every person in state custody is the responsibility of the state,” Sandoval told IPS from Washington.

Construction work is underway at the dilapidated Tocuyito prison in north-central Venezuela, which is being quickly converted into a high-security prison for hundreds of detainees in protests against the proclaimed re-election of president Nicolás Maduro. Credit: RrSs

New fad, old recipe

On 21 June, Noboa started building a maximum-security prison on a 16-hectare site in the province of Santa Elena, on the Pacific coast of Ecuador, a country of 18 million people with 36 prisons. It is expected to cost US$52 million and will hold up to 800 inmates.

“Today we are marking one of the most important milestones in our fight against terrorism and the mafias that have hijacked our country’s momentum for decades,” said the president, who will seek re-election next year.

In Venezuela, while hundreds of young protesters against Maduro’s proclamation as winner were imprisoned in late July, the president ordered two prisons in the centre of the country, Tocorón and Tocuyito, to be remodelled as “maximum security prisons” to hold the new captives.

Not to be outdone, Milei announced he will sell prisons on valuable land in urban centres in Argentina, and use the money to build maximum security prisons far from the cities. In June he sent his Security minister, Patricia Bullrich, to learn about the Salvadoran experience.

“This is the way. Tough on criminals,” the minister said after the visit.

Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa (in black) looks at a model of the new maximum security prison being built on his country’s Pacific coast. He presents it as part of the fight against criminal gangs he describes as terrorists. Credit: Presidencia de Ecuador

Maximum security prisons have always existed in the region, such as the Mexican Federal Rehabilitation Centre El Altiplano, in the central state of Mexico, where a group of former drug cartel leaders and serial killers are held.

Colombia has its most secure prisons in Combita (centre) and Valledupar (north), as well as maximum security wings in Bogota’s La Picota prison, where it has held guerrillas, convicted or accused terrorists, and drug cartel leaders for years.

Brazil, with 8.5 million square kilometres and 205 million people, has five maximum security prisons, in four of its 26 states and in the Federal District. Two prisoners escaped from Mossoro prison in the northeast last February, its first jailbreak since 2006.

Tragically famous are the prisons of Lurigancho, in Lima, and El Fronton Island, in the Pacific off the capital, for the massacre of hundreds of prisoners belonging to leftist guerrilla group Shining Path, following a riot in June 1986, in the context of the anti-terrorist struggle in Peru.

Argentina’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich visited the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, which she considers a model to follow. Credit: Presidencia de El Salvador

These maximum security prisons were shut down after the massacre, but Peru maintains the Challapalca prison, in a desolate spot in the south of the country at 4,600 metres above sea level, the highest in the world, where it holds dozens of prisoners considered highly dangerous.

Commenting on the case of El Salvador, Jiménez Sandoval observed, “does it have lower homicide levels? True. Do people feel safer? True.”

“It is also true that these punitive models based on mass arrests and human rights violations tend to have immediate effects, but it is very difficult in the medium and long term for them to continue to be useful”, she said.

“You can’t put everyone behind bars”, but also “because many of the factors that influence and cause the inclusion of young people in violence remain, such as poverty, exclusion, lack of educational and employment opportunities and life plans”, Jiménez said.

“We are not terrorists,” reads a sign held by a protester in Caracas against the proclaimed re-election of president Nicolás Maduro. Nearly 2,000 people have been arrested in the protests and the Attorney General’s Office has announced terrorism charges against hundreds of them. Credit: Provea

Cultivating fear

Now, the option of maximum security prisons goes beyond the fight against terrorism and reaches political activism, threatening opponents or demonstrators who could be accused of this crime, and also as a show of strength and determination to hold on to power.

“When rulers in countries that also face high rates of insecurity due to organised crime, gangs or other phenomena announce these measures, they are undoubtedly making gestures that indicate that they too are adopting a tough-on-crime strategy,” Segura said.

In Venezuela, “where repression of the opposition has grown after the elections, I think there is another goal: sending a message to those who are considering joining the protests that they will be arrested and imprisoned as if they were high risk criminals,” she added.

The Venezuelan government “is making a very intense effort to mainstream that anyone who protests or dissents from the officially announced election results is a terrorist,” lawyer Gonzalo Himiob, vice-president of Foro Penal, an organisation advocating human rights, and in particular of prisoners, for 15 years, told IPS.

“There is a deliberate trivialisation of terrorism by those in power, and a technical incorrectness, because arrested demonstrators do not fit the internationally accepted definitions of terrorist agents, links or acts,” Himiob said.

Many of those arrested were just bystanders not even demonstrating, and among the 1,500 arrested in the weeks following the 28 July election there are at least 114 teenagers, which delegitimises the terrorism charges, he adds.

There were “doubly serious events”, such as the announcement by the Prosecutor’s Office that those arrested would be categorised as terrorists, “a prefabricated catalogue that inverts the law, which states that first the facts are individualised and then the people, and not the other way around,” continued Himiob.

In short, “they are acting with what is known as criminal law of the enemy, using it not to do justice but to capitalise on power,” he said.

And, thus, to rule with the impulse of the springs of fear.

Der ukrainische Präsident Wolodymyr Selenskyj wird wahrscheinlich eine Umstrukturierung der Regierungsverantwortung in Erwägung ziehen. Er hat im Rahmen der für Donnerstag erwarteten größten Umbildung der Kriegsregierung eine Reihe von Spitzenministern zum Rücktritt aufgefordert.

Zum ersten Mal seit seiner Ernennung zur Nummer 1 tritt Gregor Kobel vor die Medien. Auch Nati-Trainer Murat Yakin ist dabei. Hier verpasst du im Liveticker nichts.

Im Zugersee haust ein gigantischer Wels. Zumindest, wenn man einem Gerücht Glauben schenkt. Doch jetzt gibt es offenbar Beweise für dessen Existenz – in Form einer Sonaraufnahme.

On World Sexual Health Day, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) calls for urgent measures to stifle the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STI) in the European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA) amid rising diagnoses. 

Resistance to the Hungarian presidency's approach to the EU's draft law to combat online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) was still palpable during a member states' meeting on Wednesday (4 September).

Land unter in Embrach ZH! Ein Monstergewitter setzte das Dorf bei Bülach um Mitternacht unter Wasser. Besonders betroffen: die Dorfstrasse und die Tannenstrasse. Der Bach überflutete Keller und Parterre-Wohnungen.

Ursula von der Leyen envisagerait d’accorder à l’Italie une vice-présidence exécutive de la Commission européenne, bien que le groupe CRE auquel appartient le parti de Giorgia Meloni ne fasse pas partie de la majorité pro-UE au Parlement européen.

Das Dorf Pomfret im US-Bundesstaat Vermont ist besonders im Herbst ein beliebter Fotospot für Influencer. Vor allem die Farm Jenne hat es ihnen angetan. Den 900 Einwohnern stinkt der immense Andrang allerdings und so werden Strassen und Parkplätze im Herbst gesperrt.

En juin 2021, la collision d’un planeur et d’un avion à moteur avait coûté la vie à cinq personnes, dont un enfant de 6 ans et sa maman, domiciliés à Lausanne. Le rapport du Service suisse d’enquête de sécurité publié hier tire la sonnette d’alarme.

A látogatók számát előzetes helyfoglalás és egyeurós belépődíj bevezetésével akarják korlátozni az olasz fővárosban a Trevi-kútnál - jelentette be Alessandro Onorato, a római főpolgármesteri hivatal idegenforgalomért felelős tanácsosa a Corriere della Sera napilapban szerdán.

Gegen den US-Präsidentensohn Hunter Biden beginnt am Freitag in Los Angeles ein Prozess wegen möglicher Steuervergehen. Zum Auftakt geht es zunächst um die Auswahl der Geschworenen. Die Eröffnungsplädoyers werden in der kommenden Woche erwartet.