Congress passes bill that could allow 900 people to be tried together if they are accused of being in the same criminal group
Nayib Bukele’s government has already locked up 2% of El Salvador’s adult population and built the largest prison in the Americas to house the 70,000 alleged gang members he has imprisoned.
Now the populist leader has cleared the way for mass trials of hundreds of people at a time as he steps up his year-long crackdown on the country’s gangs which critics say is eroding the rule of law and leading to many innocent people being wrongly jailed.
El Salvador’s congress passed a bill on Wednesday that could allow up to 900 people to be tried simultaneously if they come from the same region or are accused of belonging to the same criminal group.
The legislation also increases prison time for those found to be gang
leaders from 45 years to 60.
A state of emergency declared in March 2022 means the right to trial is increasingly disregarded in the Central American country and the list of people held for months awaiting trial is growing quickly.
The latest blow could leave El Salvador’s justice system as little more than a facade, human rights groups said.
“All human beings deserve the opportunity to defend themselves in court. How can they do this effectively in group trials? How can lawyers and public defenders do their work this way?” said Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, president of the Washington Office on Latin America (Wola).
Bukele’s New Ideas party said the measure would help bring more order to the country as it seeks to stamp out its violent armed gangs. Congress approved the bill with 67 votes in favour and six against.
Bukele’s harsh approach to criminality has won the millennial leader the strongest approval ratings in Latin America and a cult following with politicians across the region who emulate his casual looks and hardline security policies to win over voters.
But critics say that the 42-year-old is sweeping aside democratic checks and balances.
More than 70,000 alleged gang members have been put behind bars in the last 16 months and the crackdown is increasingly indiscriminate.
A growing number of innocent foreign visitors are finding themselves in overcrowded Salvadorian jails after being rounded up by troops for having tattoos and being in poor neighbourhoods.
“These reports are becoming more common by the day from human rights organisations, people who have managed to leave jail and families denouncing arbitrary arrests,” said Ruth Elonaro López, a lawyer at Cristosal, a Salvadorian human rights group. “The problem is the state of emergency means there no longer needs to be evidence to detain or jail someone for long periods of time. People are being rounded up because they seem nervous, they have forgotten their documents or they are simply young.”
There appears to be no long-term plan for the one in 50 adults now imprisoned in dangerously overcrowded and unsanitary conditions.
The most notorious of El Salvador’s criminal organisations, the MS-13, grew inside Salvadorian prisons in the 1990s and 2000s after its founding members were deported there from the US.
More than 6,400 documented human rights abuses have been committed during Bukele’s state of emergency and 174 people have died in state custody, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said earlier this month.
The plan for mass trials will only make prison conditions worse and add to the list of innocent people held behind bars, Jiménez Sandoval said.
“It seems El Salvador has turned the presumption of innocence principle upside down. With this arbitrary policy everybody is a suspect and a potential criminal.”
El Salvador’s congress passed a bill on Wednesday that could allow up to 900 people to be tried simultaneously if they come from the same region or are accused of belonging to the same criminal group.
A racist cop who doesn’t like your town can just round you up with 600 guilty people and jail half a goddamn village without anyone blinking. Good plan!
It sure is a good plan when the country's population is tired of living in constant fear of being robbed, tortured, raped, killed because a gang wanted to have a giggle
Sure, control an oppressive and evil gang with an oppressive and evil government. That should work out well. Populist leaders with the power to lock up anyone seldom abuse their powers /s
Crazy how long libertarians carried water for this piece of shit. Saudis need to spend billions of dollars in sports "sponsorship" and don't get half the effect, but embezzle millions while branding it as "crypto adoption" and immediately milions of bozos without better cause flock to defend you
This is only going to compound the gang problem in the long run. An innocent sent to an El Salvadoran prison has no choice but to join a gang to survive. I can only see this leading to further social destabilization and human rights abuses.
It's also textbook fascism on a whole 'nother level. This is the kind of thing that can start a revolution.
Yeah, there's precisely zero chance this doesn't blow the fuck up in El Salvador's face in the long run. Not to mention it's horrific on every possible level.
Hope to god El Salvador manages to figure out a way to get rid of this guy, and fast. Otherwise they're in for a very bad few decades.
The worse part about this is that he still has a lot of local support. I’ve seen some supporters acknowledging that there are innocent people imprisoned, but it’s a worth trade-off for the promise of “no crime”.