El Salvador\u2019s Cecot mega-prison was notorious long before the Trump administration\u2019s recent decision to deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members there. <\/p>\n
The Center for Terrorism Confinement, to give it its full name, is considered the largest prison in the Americas \u2013 with a capacity of 40,000 inmates \u2013 and has been the biggest symbol in the Latin American country\u2019s controversial crackdown on domestic crime. <\/p>\n
It is now home to some of the country\u2019s most hardened criminals, including mass murderers and gang members billed as the \u201cworst of the worst\u201d and is notorious for the spartan conditions in which they are kept. <\/p>\n
Some 10,000 to 20,000 prisoners are currently thought to be housed there, with the most recent arrivals being the 261 people the Trump administration deported from the US over the weekend \u2013 238 of whom it accused of belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and 23 alleged members of the MS-13 gang. <\/p>\n
El Salvador\u2019s leader Nayib Bukele \u2013 a strongman president and self-styled \u201cworld\u2019s coolest dictator\u201d \u2013 offered to house the US deportees in Cecot as part of an unprecedented deal in which the US will pay $6 million dollars in return. The money will help sustain El Salvador\u2019s penitentiary system, which currently costs $200 million a year. <\/p>\n
Those deported by the US got a taste of the prison\u2019s uncompromising policies as soon as they arrived Sunday morning. <\/p>\n
Officers held their heads down to waist-level as they escorted them to the facility in shackles. The new inmates were then forced to kneel while prison guards shaved their hair and shouted commands. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are executing to the letter a regiment to which you will submit from this moment on, where prison security personnel will be treated with absolute respect! Is that clear?\u201d one officer shouts at the visibly disturbed inmates in a video shared by the Salvadoran government. <\/p>\n
Such brutal introductions have been a hallmark of the prison since it started housing inmates a few years ago. <\/p>\n
Images published by the government in 2023 showed some of the first prisoners being transferred to the facility, stripped down to white boxer shorts, with their heads shaved, as they were forced to run into their cells. <\/p>\n
Inmates are not allowed visits from family or friends and some of them must face the possibility that they will never be released. <\/p>\n
Cecot houses both convicted criminals and those still going through El Salvador\u2019s court system. Some people have even been locked up without any due process, critics say. <\/p>\n
The incarcerations have been part of Bukele\u2019s controversial efforts to stem the high crime rates and gang violence that have plagued the country for years. <\/p>\n
In 2022, Bukele, with the support of lawmakers, declared a state of emergency which allowed the government to temporarily suspend constitutional rights, including the right to legal defense provided by the state. The measure was intended to last 30 days but has been extended dozens of times and continues to this day. <\/p>\n
In the three years since it was declared, security forces have arrested nearly 87,000 people nationwide, or more than 1% of the Salvadoran population, according to authorities. <\/p>\n
The government insists the crackdown has made the country safer, but critics say it has violated people\u2019s rights and resulted in countless cases of wrongful detentions. <\/p>\n
Bukele has admitted that some innocent people have been detained by mistake but says several thousand of them have already been released. He argues that the tough measures have been necessary to transform the country from being dubbed the \u201cmurder capital of the world\u201d to what he now considers one of the safest on Earth. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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