More than 200 deaths in El Salvador prisons since the beginning of the emergency regime

More than 200 inmates have died in prisons in El Salvador under the custody of State Security agents since March 2022, when the emergency regime began in the Central American country to combat gangs, according to data shared with EFE by the non-governmental organization Socorro. Humanitarian Legal.

Ingrid Escobar, representative of the entity that provides legal assistance to relatives of people detained in the context of the emergency regime measure, confirmed that 213 cases were registered between March 2022 and December 10, 2023.

He explained, during a telephone conversation, that the organization’s registry of deceased people “has been prepared based on information provided directly by relatives of the victims” and based on “monitoring of journalistic sources.”

He noted that “94% of the fatalities are men and 6% are women,” that is, “201 men compared to 12 women,” he added.

“We have evidence of these deaths, so no one can deny that they are happening,” Escobar added.

Deaths during the emergency regime

According to a document shared by Socorro Jurídico, the majority of deaths in Salvadoran prisons have occurred due to “negligence due to lack of medical care” and “homicide.”

According to official data, in the context of the emergency regime, implemented by the Government as its main security measure to combat gangs and which suspends some constitutional guarantees, there have been more than 74,000 arrests, of which more than 7,000 people would have been released on parole.

In the opinion of the humanitarian organization Amnesty International (AI), this measure has led the country to one of “its worst crises” of human rights since the end of the civil war (1980-1992) as state violence gradually replaces of the gangs.

For the Executive, all those detained are gang members or collaborators, while social organizations register more than 5,000 “direct victims” of abuses, mainly due to arbitrary arrests.

This regime approved at the end of March 2022 after an escalation of homicides attributed to gangs and which claimed the lives of more than 80 people in three days. An investigation by local media El Faro maintains that this increase was due to the alleged breakdown of an agreement between the Government and the gangs.

El Salvador will close the year 2023 under this emergency regime, after the ruling party approved the twenty-first extension of the measure for 30 days in the Legislative Assembly on December 5. With EFE

Related