Honduras Fires Its Security Minister After Prison Deaths

Honduran President Xiomara Castro dismissed Security Minister Ramón Sabillón following a massacre at a women's prison in Tamara that killed at least 46 inmates, the deadliest prison incident in Honduras in recent history. Gang members attacked the facility with machetes, guns, and flammable liquid, burning 26 people to death and killing the others by shooting or stabbing them in violence Castro publicly attributed to organized crime acting with the acquiescence of security officials.

Castro replaced Sabillón with National Police director Gustavo Sánchez and framed the attack as evidence of the profound infiltration of gang organizations into Honduras's chronically overcrowded prison system. The massacre drew international condemnation and renewed urgent calls for structural reform of a corrections infrastructure that human rights organizations had long identified as one of the most dangerous in Latin America.