The arrival of inmates allegedly belonging to the MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs to the new prison 'Terrorist Confinement Center' in El Salvador on March 15, 2023. Photo provided by the Presidency Of El Salvador / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images.
The 23-year-old prisoner arrived at the hospital with broken feet and hands, and what looked like burn marks on his back. His corpse was delivered to his family in a closed casket. The medical examiner’s office determined the man died a “sudden death.”
Torture and death have become normal in El Salvador’s prisons under authoritarian President Nayib Bukele, according to a new report by the Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal. The report says that 153 people died in custody after being arrested under Bukele’s year-long crusade against gangs, including 47 this year, according to the new investigation.
The group said it has proof that at least 28 incarcerated people “died violently from torture, blows… asphyxiation by strangulation, injuries, among other causes.” It identified one case where the autopsy indicated the prisoner, who died from strangulation, may have been asphyxiated with a “rigid object” like a stick or baton.The report is the most extensive reckoning to date of the human rights abuses that have occurred during Bukele’s campaign to dismantle the country’s violent street gangs—MS-13 and Barrio 18—which have long terrorized the country and fueled one of the highest murder rates in the world.
Even Bukele’s critics acknowledge that Bukele has largely succeeded, a feat that has made him wildly popular in El Salvador and an example to other Latin American countries enduring gang violence. But his crusade has come at a cost. Bukele has run roughshod over human rights, threatened critics with imprisonment, and kept El Salvador under what was supposed to be a temporary “state of emergency” for more than a year. The decree gives police free rein to arrest people without evidence, prohibits freedom of assembly, and denies citizens the right to legal counsel.
Since Burkele declared the state of emergency in March 2022, police have arrested more than 60,000 Salvadorans for being alleged gang members, many on flimsy evidence or none at all. Nearly two percent of El Salvador’s adult population is now incarcerated, giving the tiny Central American country the distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world.
In February, Salvadoran authorities opened a new 40,000-capacity “Terrorism Confinement Center” to accommodate the soaring prison population.The report on the reality inside the prisons is based on photographs, mortuary reports and interviews with incarcerated people who have been released in recent months, according to Cristosal. The former prisoners, whose identities were withheld, said other incarcerated people were tortured with electric shocks and batons. They also said conditions inside were inhumane, and included overflowing toilets that spilled onto the floor. A 20-year-old man said there were 45 men in his cell when he entered La Esperanza prison in San Salvador. Ten days later, it held 252.
“There was no water to clean with,” he told Cristosal. “[Men] slept under the cots and on the floor, some on the bathroom floor. There, they got fungus on their backs.”
Torture and death have become normal in El Salvador’s prisons under authoritarian President Nayib Bukele, according to a new report by the Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal. The report says that 153 people died in custody after being arrested under Bukele’s year-long crusade against gangs, including 47 this year, according to the new investigation.
The group said it has proof that at least 28 incarcerated people “died violently from torture, blows… asphyxiation by strangulation, injuries, among other causes.” It identified one case where the autopsy indicated the prisoner, who died from strangulation, may have been asphyxiated with a “rigid object” like a stick or baton.
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Even Bukele’s critics acknowledge that Bukele has largely succeeded, a feat that has made him wildly popular in El Salvador and an example to other Latin American countries enduring gang violence. But his crusade has come at a cost. Bukele has run roughshod over human rights, threatened critics with imprisonment, and kept El Salvador under what was supposed to be a temporary “state of emergency” for more than a year. The decree gives police free rein to arrest people without evidence, prohibits freedom of assembly, and denies citizens the right to legal counsel.
Since Burkele declared the state of emergency in March 2022, police have arrested more than 60,000 Salvadorans for being alleged gang members, many on flimsy evidence or none at all. Nearly two percent of El Salvador’s adult population is now incarcerated, giving the tiny Central American country the distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world.
In February, Salvadoran authorities opened a new 40,000-capacity “Terrorism Confinement Center” to accommodate the soaring prison population.The report on the reality inside the prisons is based on photographs, mortuary reports and interviews with incarcerated people who have been released in recent months, according to Cristosal. The former prisoners, whose identities were withheld, said other incarcerated people were tortured with electric shocks and batons. They also said conditions inside were inhumane, and included overflowing toilets that spilled onto the floor. A 20-year-old man said there were 45 men in his cell when he entered La Esperanza prison in San Salvador. Ten days later, it held 252.
“There was no water to clean with,” he told Cristosal. “[Men] slept under the cots and on the floor, some on the bathroom floor. There, they got fungus on their backs.”