About 2,000 suspected gang members were taken to the Tecoluca area, about 75 kilometers southeast of the capital San Salvador, at dawn. The BBC reported on Saturday. The photos showed numerous men with tattoos and shaved heads.
Bukele recently unveiled the facility in which up to 40,000 people will subsequently be held – more than the Austrian town of Steyr has inhabitants. “This will be their new home, they will live here for decades, all together, unable to cause further harm to the population,” he wrote on Twitter.
Lack of sanitary facilities
The prison is at the center of Bukele’s declared war on gang crime. According to the government, it occupies a total area of 165 hectares and will be monitored by around 850 soldiers and police. Eight buildings each contain 32 cells of about 100 square meters each. According to the BBC, the cells have only two sinks and two toilets each.
Portal/Secretaria De Prensa De La Presidencia Photos from the presidential office showed the first prisoners in Tecoluca on Saturday
The state of emergency has been in force in the country of six million inhabitants for almost a year. Among other things, this allows for detention without a judge’s decision, and a number of fundamental rights have also been restricted. The government wants to curb the violence of criminal gangs. More than 62,000 suspected gang members have been arrested.
giant prison in El Salvador
In El Salvador, the first members of a criminal organization were taken to a new prison. There must be room for 40,000 prisoners.
Repeatedly prolonged state of emergency
Parliament recently renewed the state of emergency. “The country has already changed, we are not going to take a step back”, said the president of the Parliament, Ernesto Castro. “Let’s get rid of all the gang members.”
Today, at dawn, on operational ground, we transferred the first 2,000 pandilleros to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
This will be their new home, where they will live for decades, mestizos, without being able to do any more damage to the population.
We follow…#GuerraContraPandillas pic.twitter.com/9VvsUBvoHC
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) February 24, 2023
The government justifies the repeated extension of the state of emergency with the drop in the homicide rate in the country, among other things, which it sees as a confirmation of its strategy. According to official data, last year there were 7.8 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. In 2021 there were still 18.1 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. According to media reports and US government information, the drop is due, among other things, to a secret deal between the government and the gangs – which Bukele rejected.
APA/AFP/Salvadoran Presidency The prison is estimated to have a maximum capacity of 40,000 people
Criticism of arbitrary arrests
However, human rights activists speak of numerous arbitrary arrests – even Bukele had to admit that several thousand innocent civilians ended up in prison. At least 3,000 detainees whose innocence has been proven have now been released. With an arrest rate of 605 per 100,000 people, El Salvador already has more prisoners than any other country, according to the World Prison Brief database.