IN El Salvador, a single phone call can get you locked up and packed in an iron-barred cell with murderous gangsters.
The country has historically been torn apart by armed violence and over the last two years embarked on aggressive policies to lock up any suspected gang members for life.
Incredible images show thousands of violent skinhead gangsters from the country’s main gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, crammed into an inescapable mega-prison.
Pictures show rows and rows of prisoners sitting with their hands behind their shaved heads at the high-tech prison.
Other images reveal gang members stripped down to only white shorts running through the facility.
Meanwhile, prison officers armed with assault rifles are guarding the inmates.
Amnesty International’s Irene Cuellar spoke to The Sun about El Salvador’s state of emergency and the mass incarceration.
She said: “Right now, we have the highest incarceration rate in the country – in the world.
“In El Salvador, almost 2 per cent of its population are in jail.”
But Irene explained how among those captive are those who face life behind bars without any proof they were a part of a crime – due to anonymous tips.
She continued: “Most of them have not been found guilty. They are still under this legal status that is pre-trial detention.”
El Salvadorians may be fearing any enemies as being arrested and thrown in prison via “criminal association” has become a common practice.
In May 2022, President Nayib Bukele’s government set up a terrifying hotline so people could provide anonymous tips to “bring more terrorists to justice.”
The National Police investigate reports and use intelligence work to determine whether the person named is or has been a so-called “collaborator” of the two main gangs.
Civil organisations like Amnesty International have made claims that anonymous accusations have led to wrongful imprisonments.
This is even worse in poorer communities where gangs ran the areas.
Irene explained how wrongful imprisonments are “failing to address the issue with a more comprehensive approach that tackles the root causes of insecurity and crime.”
She said: “We have interviewed a lot of people that have been in prison and right now are under investigation but have been granted pre-trial detention.
“The thing that they have told us is the inhumane conditions they are facing in prison.
“The families, I mean, they have no chance to get in touch with them. Some of them spend two, three months just to find out which prison their family is.
“For this family is also really deep. The people that are being detained are people that are in poverty conditions, so this is a model that criminalised poverty.”
The El Salvador authorities even acknowledged that 6,000 detainees were actually innocent in 2023 and claim they’ve been released.
But the Legal Aid organisation claims there are still 14,000 people locked up who have never been connected to a gang.
Some allegedly innocent people have continuously been denounced to the regime – and don’t even have an individual trial.
Due to overcrowding in the prisons, the Salvadorian Parliament and New Ideas party have resorted to transitory provisions and reforms to the Law against Organised Crime.
This means that collective trials are held which could involve up to an unbelievable 900 detainees at a time – including those who haven’t been proven to be a part of any crime.
Amnesty International claim this is a human rights breach.
Irene said: “The strategy the government came up with, they say, in order to make things quicker, is to have massive trials.
“They are talking about trials that are from 200 through to 900 people in just one trial.
“[Amnesty International] cannot imagine how people are going to be able to exercise adequately their right to defence.”
After the state of emergency had been established in March 2022, within a few months, over 1,000 minors had been thrown into pre-trial detention – 21 of whom were only 12 or 13.
This is because a law was passed when the state of emergency was declared that lowered the age of criminal responsibility for children accused of gang-related crimes from 16 to 12 years old.
Amnesty International said how cops would allegedly come into poor neighbourhoods and “arrest everyone” as innocent people lived alongside gang members.
Irene said: “They were victims of gangs. They were living in the same communities where the gang members used to live.
“That’s why they had control over that.
“Police and military forces came to the poor neighbourhoods, assuming that everyone were gang members.”
For over two years now, El Salvador has remained in a state of emergency with no end in sight for it.
Since March 2022, El Salvador has also enacted a state of emergency to fight gang violence after decades of warfare, bloodshed and terror caused by the same gangs that rule Honduras.
Before the state of emergency was declared, a truce broke down between MS-13, Barrio 18 and the government leading to its bloodiest day in decades as 60 people were shot dead.
In response, whole towns were invaded by the army who threw 70,000 people – 2 per cent of the population and 7 per cent of the male population aged between 14 and 29 – behind bars.
The mass arrests have earnt El Salvador the highest incarceration rate in the world – but violence levels took a plunge.
This unforgiving approach is central to the hugely popular, but controversial President Nayib Bukele’s “war on gangs” to end what he calls the “terrorist rule” over his state.
The fresh leader, 43, styles himself as “the coolest dictator in the world” and has helped to halve the murder rate which still remarkably sits at the highest in the world.
He turned prisons that were “headquarters for gangs” into their nightmares.
The inhumane and humiliating conditions that alleged gang members are kept in is part of his intention to strike fear in the heart of their criminal networks.
For some, their only crime might have been to be at the wrong place at the wrong time or to have once got gang-affiliated tattoos.
Rights groups believe that between 10,000 to 15,000 innocent people were caught up in Bukele’s offensive.
Shocking pictures show ultra-violent gang members packed together like sardines into the “world’s largest” mega-prison reserved for the highest-ranking members of MS-13 and Barrio 18.
The 57-acre “inescapable” Cecot jail is able to house up to 40,000 gangsters stuffed inside 156-man cells that are guarded day and night by 850 police officers and soldiers.
What is known about the grim conditions inside has sparked criticism from human rights groups, especially considering the government’s assurances that those who walk in will never walk out.
“Let all the ‘human rights’ NGOs know that we are going to wipe out these bloody murderers and their collaborators.
“We will put them in prison and they will never get out.
“We will heal our country and eliminate this plague completely. Take your failed recipes elsewhere,” President Bukele responded to objections on X/Twitter in May 2023.
By imprisoning crime lords on an archipelago 155 miles off the coast, the government hopes to cut the head of the snake and end their connection with the outside world.
