Four prisoners in all have been found dead in the Zone 18 Preventivo Prison in Guatemala. Moises Tun Toc was found dead in his cell on 24 October. A few days earlier, Antonio Castillo Mendez, Jose Morales Campos and Oliverio Echeverria were also found dead. Initially the government claimed all four had committed suicide, but a forensic inquiry undertaken by the Toxicology Department at the University of San Carlos (USAC) has established they were murdered, apparently drugged with barbiturates. Two guards and a sub-director of the prison have been jailed in connection with the deaths. Local human rights groups have claimed the four were killed as part of a campaign of intimidation intended to prevent other prisoners from revealing information about “death squads”.
