Inside El Salvador mega prison where 12,000 gang members are held
Welcome to Hell: Inside El Salvador mega prison where 12,000 gang members are held… and plead for more food and medicine for the terminally ill dying around them
- More than 12,000 suspected gang members locked in mega-prison in Tecoluca
- It opened in January with rights groups comparing it to a concentration camp
For six months, more than 12,000 suspected members of El Salvador’s most feared gangs have been confined to their cells in the country’s notorious mega prison.
Life in the vast Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) in Tecoluca is dire, with prisoners pleading for officials to give food and medicine for the terminally ill dying around them.
The prison is packed with an astonishing 12,114 prisoners – many of whom are bitter rivals from two of the most feared gangs MS-13 and Calle 18, with history showing how their foot soldiers will take any opportunity to kill their enemies.
In each 100 square-metre cell, there are around 75 notoriously dangerous inmates who sleep on metal cabins and are forced to share just two toilets and two sinks.
They have no mattresses, no chance to step outside into the fresh air, and they are regularly beaten and tortured by the guards, human rights groups say.
Inmates remain in a cell at the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) mega-prison, where hundreds of members of the MS-13 and 18 Street gangs are being held in Tecoluco on Monday
Life in the vast Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) in Tecoluca is dire, with prisoners pleading for officials to give food and medicine for the terminally ill dying around them
A tattooed gang member looks at the camera from a cell in the CECOT mega prison on Tuesday
An inmate puts cream on a fellow inmate’s face in a cell at the mega prison on Tuesday
In each 100 square-metre cell, there are around 75 notoriously dangerous inmates who sleep on metal cabins and are forced to share just two toilets and two sinks
The cells are bare, with thick steel bars separating the suspected gang members from the heavily armed prison guards.
And when Human Rights Commissioner of El Salvador, the Colombian Andrés Guzmán, visited the notorious prison, which opened in January, he insisted the inmates are ‘in good condition and their human rights are being respected’.
But human rights groups have compared the conditions in the prison as something similar to the concentration camps used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
A report by human rights group Cristosal found that 174 inmates have been tortured and killed in horrifically violent deaths in the year since President Nayib Bukele launched his merciless campaign against the gangs.
‘When you are a child, anyone tells you lies, sweetens it up and you fall into a mistake, and when you grow up (…) you come to realise it,’ Nelson Velásquez, 37, who has ‘MS-13’ (Mara Salvatrucha) tattooed on his head, said during Guzman’s visit.
The mega-prison with a capacity for 40,000 people began receiving inmates on February 24, and to date there are 12,114 suspected gang members, mostly accused of belonging to the violent MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs, born on the streets of the US city of Los Angeles in the early 1980s.
Pictures from inside of the prison’s first 12,000 inmates show many with bold tattoos displaying Roman numerals of the numbers 18 or 13, their gang affiliation etched onto their skin with ink.
With so many rival gangsters under the same roof, it begs the question how the authorities in El Salvador hope to prevent the same horrific violence seen on the streets from being recreated in the confines of the prison.
With his hands tied, wearing a white T-shirt and shorts, Velásquez, an inmate in cell 13 of building 3, says that he has already served two sentences for different crimes that totalled 15 years, but now he awaits a new trial.
The cells are bare, with thick steel bars separating the suspected gang members from the heavily armed prison guards.
Inmates exercise at the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) mega-prison on Monday
Human rights groups have compared the conditions in the prison as something similar to the concentration camps used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
Inmates talk to the presidential commissioner for human rights and freedom of expression, Colombian Andres Guzman Caballero on Monday
Inmates remain in a cell at the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) mega-prison on Monday
The prison is packed with an astonishing 12,114 prisoners – many of whom are bitter rivals from two of the most feared gangs MS-13 and Calle 18, with history showing how their foot soldiers will take any opportunity to kill their enemies
Inmates talk to the presidential commissioner for human rights and freedom of expression, Andres Guzman Caballero about the conditions there
An inmate is seen with his head tattooed with MS-18 – a notorious gang in El Salvador
The prison pavilions have a curved roof that guarantees natural ventilation for the prisoners, as well as skylight spaces to filter the sun’s rays into a patio that separates the cells.
Velásquez narrates that the movement of the sun determines the turn of the inmates so that each cell receives some rays.
‘Here we are persevering day by day trying to change,’ José Hurquilla Bonilla, from the Barrio 18 gang, manages to say from inside a cell.
The jail was built to hold part of the more than 70,000 gang members detained under an emergency regime that was decreed by Congress at the request of Bukele, in response to an escalation of violence that claimed the lives of 87 people between December 25 and March 27, 2022.
To build the prison, the State bought 166 hectares, 23 of which were used to build eight pavilions that are located within a perimeter surrounded by a concrete wall 11 meters high and 2.1 kilometers long, protected by electrified barbed wire. .
During the visit to the prison, Commissioner Guzmán asked the inmates about their situation in the cells and most of them said that the water ‘is not lacking’, but they asked for brooms and detergent to clean the cells.
Other prisoners complained of food shortages and clamoured for medicines for those with terminal illnesses.
‘There are many things to improve, and every day there is a team working,’ Commissioner Guzmán responded to the inmates.
In a report after the first year of the emergency regime, the Human Rights NGO Cristosal denounced that it had a record of 174 deaths in state custody, and described it as ‘a permanent measure of repression and violations of human rights.’
The suspected gang members sit inside their cell where they have remained for six months on Tuesday
Inmates remain inside a cell at the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) mega-prison
An inmate drinks a glass of water inside his cell at the mega prison in El Salvador on Monday
An inmate talks in a cell at the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) mega-prison
Inmates sit on their metal beds in the notorious mega-prison in Tecoluca on Monday
Inmates remain in a cell at the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) mega-prison
But at CECOT, according to Guzmán, ‘inmates, within the general parameters of a detention center, are in good condition (and) human rights are respected.’
After talking with inmates from different cells, the Human Rights attorney, Raquel Caballero, said that the inmates complained about the food rations.
‘They complain that the food is not enough’ and ‘that they are free, they do nothing because they are locked up,’ Caballero told AFP.
The imprisoned gang members, according to the official, ‘are aware that what they did (crimes) has brought them (until) here.’
The attorney said that a medical team of 50 people, including nurses and doctors, is caring for the inmates.
A doctor stated that ‘daily’ water samples are taken and sent to a laboratory to guarantee its quality.
In February, the CECOT began with a severe regime in which the inmates never left their cells, and are still not allowed to receive family visits, but for inmates like Velásquez, as time goes by, ‘the blessing is flowing,’ he says in reference to the fact that the majority have declared themselves ‘Christians’.
The prison’s opening comes as part of a brutal crackdown on the two gangs, the pride of president Nayib Bukele’s campaign to clean up national violence.
The number of homicides in El Salvador – considered by many to be the murder capital of the world – tumbled 56.8 percent in 2022, but the result will be an overcrowded 40,000-capacity prison full of the country’s most dangerous criminals, many of whom are on opposite sides of a decades-long feud.
El Salvador’s historic crime problem goes back to a civil war in the 1980s.
As Latin American Refugees fled to America, the MS-13 and Calle 18 gangs formed on the streets of Los Angeles. When the war ended, those from El Salvador returned. With them, they brought their gang affiliations, rivalries and violence.
After talking with inmates from different cells, the Human Rights attorney, Raquel Caballero, said that the inmates complained about the food rations
An inmate drinks water in a cell at the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) mega-prison on Monday
Life in the vast Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) in Tecoluca is dire, with prisoners pleading for officials to give food and medicine for the terminally ill dying around them
A police officers guards inmates through a metal mesh at the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) mega-prison on Monday
Life in the vast Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) in Tecoluca is dire, with prisoners pleading for officials to give food and medicine for the terminally ill dying around them
Now, Calle 18 is thought to have around 65,000 global members, while MS-13 has between 50,000 to 70,000. As their numbers grew, their influence spread.
For many years now, thousands of members from both have fought and died for the crown of Central America’s most powerful gang, profiting off crimes such as sex and drug trafficking, racketeering, money laundering, extortion and kidnapping.
In one instance of extortion in 2015, a man who owned a bus refused to pay his $1 fee to the MS-13 gang. Three weeks later, two young gang members cornered him, threw him to the ground and shot him four times – twice in the head.
His son said his father was killed because of $21.
Another transport company chief told the New York Times in 2016 that since 2004, 26 of his employees had been killed by the gangs because they refused to pay.
Each gang has powerful alliances, with MS-13 in league with the Mexican Mafia and the Sinaloa Cartel. Calle 18, meanwhile, counts the Triads among its allies.
Both gangs are known for their brutality, as well as their strict defined ‘moral’ codes. Prospective members must endure cruel initiations, while breaching the codes can result in long beatings, and even executions.
Their members dole out merciless retribution, often killing not only enemy gangsters, but their entire families as well – and anyone who may be in the immediate vicinity. Buses full of passengers have been slaughtered in such attacks, just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This can create a spiral of revenge killings, as more members seek retribution.
Calle 18 has earned itself the name ‘the Children’s Army’ for its recruitment of elementary and middle school children. Senior members often get minors to carry out deeds – including killings – to keep their own hands clean.
In response, MS-13 members have shown no reluctance when it comes to the killing children they suspect are working for their bitter rivals.
Until now, successive governments have struggled to deal with violence spilling across El Salvador. In 2015, it had a daily homicide rate of 18.2, and it regularly appears at the top of charts ranking nations by their homicides-per-100,000 people.
President Nayib Bukele claims the mega prison is the solution. Last year, he declared a state of emergency that suspended the rights to legal council and increased the time an arrested person can be held without charge – among other powers.
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