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Two inmates dead after second day of riots in Mexican prison

By Andrew V. Pestano

March 29 (UPI) -- Mexican officials said at least two inmates died and 13 people sustained injuries, including two guards, at the Cadereyta prison near the city of Monterrey.

The Cadereyta prison -- formally called the Center for Social Reinsertion Cadereyta, or Cereso Cadereyta -- in the state of Nuevo León saw its second consecutive day of violence on Tuesday. A riot on Monday, in which at least nine people were injured, began as inmates protested the use of X-ray machines to screen visiting relatives, while the one on Tuesday began after inmates set fires and attacked the prison's pharmacy in what they said was a response to a lack of food and water caused by Monday's riot.

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Aldo Fasci Zuazua, the public security secretariat for Nuevo León state, said the riot at the prison on Tuesday began after 56 inmates from the group known as The Renegades broke into the pharmacy to steal medication.

Fasci Zuazua said the inmates stole the medication to use them recreationally and burned mattresses in two areas of the prison to distract authorities. He said one inmate died in a hospital after inhaling smoke and injecting or taking drugs, while the other burned to death. Three other inmates were hospitalized.

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Prison officials said authorities took control of the prison after Tuesday's riot, El Universal reported.

Mauro Guerra Villarreal, the president of the opposition National Action Party, on Wednesday called for the resignation of the director of the Cadereyta prison, as well as the directors of the Nuevo León prisons of Apodaca and Topo Chico -- where violent riots have occurred in recent years.

"The situation in Nuevo León resembles a lamentable film script that is repeated day after day in which the state authorities are merely passive spectators before the reality that is lived -- either by apathy or inability to solve problems in the interior of the prisons," Guerra Villarreal said. "The disorder in Topo Chico and Cadereyta shakes the [residents], who come with concern that the lack of security in prisons is a sign of the lack of control by this government, which, given its inability to solve the problems, minimizes [concerns]."

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