1/17/2024 0 Comments Lake fear 3 trailerThe crackdown has brought new life to the public spaces of communities that once cowered in fear of gang violence.įor Pedro, the crackdown has meant not only losing his job as a gardener in Monterrey, Mexico, but the loss of his Mexican documents. Pedro, who says he came out of prison “psychologically destroyed,” went 15 days without being able to sleep and didn’t leave home.īukele is running for a second five-year term - despite a constitutional ban on reelection - largely on the results of his gang crackdown, which has been highly popular in El Salvador. Luis and Pedro, like most of the 7,000 people the government says it had released through August, have been granted alternatives to pre-trial detention, but both still have to sign in at the courthouse. Luis, already hypertensive since before his arrest, believes his incarceration led to the diabetes he was diagnosed with while in the prison. “I got so many illnesses, fungus, rashes on my body, rotting, scabies, boils on my head – terrible bumps leaking blood,” Pedro said. A receptacle held stagnant, rancid-smelling water used for both flushing the toilets and drinking, Pedro said. They described being packed into cells with as many as 300 other prisoners, including gang members, forced to share two toilets. Journalists were allowed to speak to only one pre-selected prisoner. ![]() Last month, the government allowed AP to tour its new mega-prison built at the start of the state of emergency and now holding some 12,000 alleged or convicted gang members, barely a fourth of its 40,000 capacity. Pedro also requested that only his first name be used to describe what he witnessed in prison. Other prisoners later told him some of the inmates had been killed by the guards. ![]() “They jumped on them like they were springs, three guards jumped on them” to the point they lost consciousness, said the 39-year-old man. From his cell he saw repeatedly how guards would grab prisoners and beat them. Pedro was arrested in July 2022 and held at Mariona too. “When the state decides to make massive arrests without prior investigation, without going to an independent and impartial judge and (instead) ordering detention measures in a generalized way, it assumes the responsibility for all of the people it has arrested,” Navas said. Navas, who previously was the National Civil Police inspector general, said there should be accountability in the inmate deaths. Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado said his office has not received any complaints of torture or degrading treatment against citizens. El Salvador’s Justice and Public Security Ministry did not respond to a request for comment about the treatment of prisoners and prisoner deaths in their facilities.ĭuring a virtual hearing in July with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, El Salvador’s Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights and Freedom of Expression Andrés Guzmán denied torture or violations of freedom of expression. In mid-June, the Attorney General’s Office said it had shelved 142 inmate death cases that could not be blamed on guards. “There are registries in the Forensic Medicine Institute that establish the cause of death as strangulation, hanging, blows to the stomach, to the head,” said Zaira Navas, legal chief for Cristosal. ![]() No victim had yet been convicted, the group said. Human rights organization Cristosal tallied 153 incarceration deaths during the first year of the state of emergency. It’s still difficult to think about the abuse, he said, but at least he survived prison, unlike many others who were arrested under the special powers. “I hadn’t noticed that on the floor there was a puddle of blood that was my own blood that had spilled from all of the injuries I had on my back and head,” he said. In the cell, Luis collapsed and stayed there until another guy came over and asked if he was alive.
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