Santo Domingo.- Several inmates of the prison at the northern city Moca staged a brief revolt Friday morning, including the holding of 10 hostages, a situation that Prisons director Manuel de Jesús Pérez Sanchez called “a small incident.”

He said the prison guards reestablished order once the Prosecutor of Espaillat province arrived at the site. “We applied the needed force to establish the control by the authorities.”

The Police official said the inmates staged the incident in an attempt to avoid transfers to other correctional facilities and from disputes of sales of merchandise and drugs within the site. “We are trying to dismantle the previous manner in which the jails operate. All is under control, the four inmates locked themselves up in one cell and had been warned to release the 10 they companions they were holding.”

Speaking by phone on Channel 37, Perez Sanchez said the inmates, now being held in the prison’s high security area, are part of a group which seeks to control the sales within the jail and resisted being transferred to the Azua 15 facility, and which “sells drugs within the prison.”