New videos of the fire appear inside a CAI in Soacha with young people inside

On September 4, 2020, nine young people who were detained in the CAI of San Mateo, located in the municipality of Soacha, died from severe burns they suffered after the place caught fire.

According to the councilor Diego Cancino, around 20 families went to visit the same number of young people who remained in that Police station. However, the authorities prevented them from seeing the detainees, who, “days before, they were torturing, mistreating, and not feeding them.”.

Between 1:30 and 2 pm a fire broke out because one of the young people set fire to a blanket. The flames, according to the lobbyist, were intensified by means of a device that, apparently, “was driven by a policeman.”

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In the last hours, two videos that show part of what happened that tragic day at CAI went viral. One of them was shared by the councilor of Soacha Heiner Gaitán Parra, who assured on his Twitter account: “Fire in the CAI of San Mateo. Victims were in the process of prosecution, during the fire the negligence of the Police was denounced to the desperate cries of detainees and their families. (20 people were crammed into a 3M x4M cell) “.

In the recording you can hear screams from the relatives of the detainees who desperately try to help them get out without receiving support from the uniformed men who only stop to observe.

In second video, it can be seen as a mother try to take a hose to spray water inside the CAI, but a policeman arrives and takes it away.

The painful story of a mother

This case went unnoticed by the authorities, who only recently began investigations to find out what It happened that September 4 and if the police present had any responsibility in the nine deaths that the fire left behind.

The Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (Peers) presented an account of one of the mothers who was going to visit one of her children that day, at the CAI in San Mateo.

“On September 4, 2020, at the CAI station in San Mateo, I introduced myself as the mother of one of the detainees at 1:20 in the afternoon.”said the woman who does not identify herself for security reasons.

He also commented that that day all the relatives of the detainees were present and “the boys were demanding the visit, because on September 3 they had been beaten, which the police knew where to hit so as not to show abuse. They yelled at us that day that they were going to let them visit, that they would not let them enter the articles, nor the food that we could bring them on Fridays. They asked and demanded your visit”.

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When the fire broke out, the mother told Pares that it was something very slight. “We would tell them, we would beg the police to help us. There was a shift change. There were more than 20 policemen there and none of them did anything to help them, none of them did anything to prevent the boys from burning us. They were not given, as they say, the win. What the police did was cross their hands and let the fire spread”.

Minutes later, when the flames spread in the place, where there were more than 20 people, mostly young people, the relatives began to break glass, “We removed the bars to enter, there were some relatives who came in with fire extinguishers and put out the fire, but it was too late because the boys got burned”, the citizen related.

What did it cost the police to put out the fire? If they were behind a gate that had a padlock and they were the ones who were guarding them. If the Police were under their charge, why did they allow them to burn themselves to death?

Prosecutor’s Office will assume the investigation of the fire

After the complaint, the entity will begin to study the facts to determine if the high number of victims was a consequence of the lack of help from the station’s uniforms.

“The Office of the Attorney General seeks to establish the actions deployed by the uniformed officers once the fire started, and if the allegations that 20 young people remained in the place are true, who protested because they had been denied the possibility of having a family visit”, stated the entity through a statement.

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To advance in the collection of evidence, the entity will order the taking of evidence, including the statements of councilor Diego Cancino, as well as those of the superior who was in charge of the Police station and the uniformed men who were in service on the day of the unfortunate event.

Also, the Colonel César Ovidio Castro, Commander of the Cundinamarca Police, rejected any allegation of negligence and indicated that the investigations to clarify the facts are ongoing.