One Israeli killed, one injured in Ecuador prison riots
Convict Shai Dahan, 38, was found lifeless in his cell at Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil by officers during a riot.
By CELIA JEANA man holds an Ecuadorian flag in the aftermath of protests against Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno's austerity measures, after Moreno imposed a military-enforced curfew in the capital Quito, Ecuador October 13, 2019.(photo credit: REUTERS)
An Israeli citizen was killed and another injured during a prison riot in Ecuador on Saturday night, Walla reported citing Israel's Foreign Ministry.Convict Shai Dahan, 38, was found lifeless in his cell at Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil by officers during a riot. According to Ecuadorian media reports, he died after being hit over the head with a blunt object in his cell just five days before his court hearing.During the same attack, another Israeli citizen named Oren Sheinman was injured. State authorities are currently investigating the incident, including how the attackers managed to enter the cell where the Israelis were being held, and the exact circumstances under which they were injured.Dahan was arrested in March for fraud in the sale of medical equipment and coronavirus tests under a false identity, in a plot that allegedly also included former Ecuadorian president Abdalá Bucaram.Dahan was reported to have $100,000 in his possession at the time of his arrest. While the plot was led by Dahan, Sheinman was also involved in the incident, consequently leading to his arrest, according to the state media reports.Following a subsequent raid on the house where the two were staying in the city of Santa Elena, an additional $200,000 and three luxury vehicles were found.Ecuadorian media published an excerpt from a conversation Dahan had with the former president two days before he was killed. In the conversation, Dahan speaks in a strangled voice about a friend who lied to him, KAN News reported.During the conversation the former president promised to direct the identity of the judges at the trial in Dahan's case through an associate in the Ecuadorian prosecutor's office, KAN News reported citing the Ecuadorian state media.Dahan's lawyer wrote on Twitter following the murder that "there is a mafia willing to do anything, yet, it is never willing to be punished."Bucaram himself claimed on Twitter that Dahan was killed as a result of "state terrorism" and that he was killed in order to conceal the false accusations made by the authorities against his son and the Israeli citizen.
Ecuadorian Interior Minister María Paula Romo described Dahan's plot as "daring" in the media reports.The Israeli Embassy in Quito, Ecuador's capital city, and the Department for Israelis Abroad in the Consular Division of the Foreign Ministry are in contact with the families of the two Israelis at this time, according to the Foreign Ministry report confirming the media reports.The death and injury of the two Israelis occurred five days after other riots broke out in the prison in which at least 11 prisoners were killed, and 13 prisoners and five guards were injured.
