El Salvador moves 2,000 alleged gang members to new ‘mega prison’

The Salvadoran authorities has been accused of widespread abuses because it waives civil liberties to fight gang exercise.

Dozens of individuals are reported to have died in jail amid a state of exception that has suspended civil liberties [File: Salvador Melendez/AP Photo]

The Central American nation of El Salvador has transferred 2,000 individuals accused of gang membership to a lately opened “mega-prison”. The switch comes after a wave of anti-gang operations through which police swept up greater than 64,000 individuals and key civil liberties have been suspended.

In a Twitter publish on Friday, President Nayib Bukele celebrated the arrival of the alleged gang members on the jail, which has house for 40,000 individuals and is claimed to be the biggest within the Americas.

“At daybreak, in a single operation, we transferred the primary 2,000 members to the Heart for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT),” stated Bukele. “This will likely be their new home, the place they'll reside for many years, all blended, unable to do any additional hurt to the inhabitants.”

Bukele and his allies handed a controversial “state of exception” final 12 months, suspending key rights comparable to the appropriate to a lawyer and the appropriate to non-public communication. The declaration additionally allowed police to make arrests with no warrant and with out clarification.

Human rights teams have criticised the measures, accusing the federal government of empowering itself to act with impunity with little recourse for the wrongfully imprisoned. Dozens of imprisoned individuals have died throughout the state of exception, which has been prolonged a number of occasions.

Nonetheless, the crackdown has garnered widespread assist from Salvadorans. Many credit score the measures with curbing the legal gangs which have inflicted campaigns of violence and exploitation on whole neighbourhoods for a long time.

In a February article, the Salvadoran paper El Faro, which has reported on the alleged abuses throughout the state of exception, stated the federal government had dealt a severe blow to the gangs, even because it questioned how sturdy these modifications could be.

“Critics of the state of exception admit, with nuance, that it has produced tangible outcomes for the inhabitants,” the article reads. “However they focus the dialogue on the long run: How will these organizations mutate? How sustainable are the achievements of a coverage of repression?”

Some critics additionally requested what would occur when those that had been arrested have been ultimately launched from jail.

On Friday, Bukele and his allies appeared to supply a reply: They received’t be.

“We're eliminating this most cancers from society,” justice and safety minister Gustavo Villatoro stated on Twitter. “Know that you'll by no means stroll out of CECOT, you'll pay for what you're … cowardly terrorists.

The advanced, situated about 74 kilometres (46 miles) southeast of the capital San Salvador, is made up of eight buildings, every with 32 cells that maintain greater than 100 individuals apiece. A single cell, nevertheless, solely has two sinks and one rest room.

The jail’s warden, sporting a ski masks to guard his id, instructed journalists when the undertaking was unveiled that the cells won't embody mattresses.