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a jail in the resort city of Acapulco, authorities said on Monday.
The discovery came as 500 federal officers prepared to transfer about 60 inmates to maximum security prisons overnight on Sunday to Monday, said Arturo Martinez, spokesperson for federal anti-drug operations in the western state of Guerrero.
Police also found six female prisoners in the men’s section of the jail, as well as sharp weapons, two peacocks, and luxury items such as plasma TVs, he said.
“We’re investigating the probable culprits,” said Martinez, spokesperson for the federal operation which is working to stem a wave of violence blamed on organised crime in the region.
Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located, has the third highest rate of murders in Mexico after the northern border states of Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon.
In the first nine months of 2011 about 1 348 people were murdered in Guerrero, according to an October tally from daily Reforma. Mexico’s overcrowded jails are rife with corruption and see frequent violence including riots, killings and breakouts.
Meanwhile, the governor of a Russian prison has lost his job after he was revealed to be supplying jailed crime bosses with luxury cells fitted with plasma TVs, fish tanks, and drinks cabinets stocked with vodka and whisky. A photograph of one such cell released by investigators showed a cosy wood-panelled room equipped with a fish tank, a sofa bed and numerous criminal icons. State prosecutors in Russia’s Volgograd region said they had discovered the cash-for-favours scam during an unannounced spot check earlier this month. They said certain criminal “authorities” at the offending prison were living in pleasant rooms equipped with “soft furnishings, mod cons, and luxury items” in clear breach of Russian law.
Prosecutors added that they were astonished after finding three such rooms in the southern Russian region’s prison number twelve. A stash of homemade knives was also uncovered as well as drinks cabinets containing “expensive imported vodka, cognac and whisky”.
The rooms were decorated with impromptu shrines to mafia bosses including photographs of famous Russian crime lords styled as icons. Prosecutors alleged that inmates also had mobile phone and Internet access.
A photograph of one such cell released by investigators showed a cosy wood-panelled room equipped with a fish tank, a sofa bed and numerous criminal icons.
The prison’s governor has already been replaced although the regional prison service has issued a statement trying to play down the scandal.
It claimed the rooms were for psychological mentoring only, and that the expensive alcohol found was in fact nothing more than aftershave. – Sapa-BBC.
Online Reporter