Opening of the new mega-prison in El Salvador with a spectacular show of force

By Florian Rötzer

President Nayib Bukele built a prison for 40,000 suspected gang members according to the security strategy through incarceration.

In the course of the crackdown on gang crime with the Plan Control Territorial, more than 60,000 members were arrested in one year in El Salvador, which has a population of just 6.5 million, using methods that are dubious even for a constitutional state and have been criticized by human rights organizations.

Even without a court order, suspects may be detained and held indefinitely. Thousands have been innocently detained, including many minors, according to an HRW report published in January.

Since President Nayib Bukele came to power in 2019, the number of killings has decreased significantly, with 2 per 100,000 in January and no killings so far in February.

According to him, he has made El Salvador the safest country; his method: lock them away in prison.

El Salvador has also surpassed the U.S. as the country with the highest prison population relative to the population to date, with 80,000 prisoners in considered prisons.

While at first it was assumed Bukele had made a deal with the gangs that control parts of the country as in other Central American states, he declared war on the “pandillas,” the gang members, such as the maras, declared a state of emergency and immediately began building the largest central prison in the Americas to confine them there and isolate them from society.

In the war against gangs, also known as the anti-terror war, security forces surrounded and searched entire cities.

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