Exception regime, two years of thousands of arrests and complaints in El Salvador

With the cry of “They took them alive, we want them alive”hundreds of people continue to claim The Savior for the innocence of his relatives and denouncing his arbitrary detention under an exceptional regime, implemented to combat gangs at the end of March 2022 and which has been in effect for two years.

The measure was approved in Congress, by a large pro-government majority, at the request of Nayib Bukele’s Government after an escalation of murders attributed to gangs that claimed the lives of more than 80 people in three days.

This regime suspends constitutional guarantees, such as the right to defense of detainees, and in two years has left more than 78,100 arrests, more than 200 deaths in state custody and thousands of complaints of human rights violations.

The measure, supported by a large deployment of the military, has practically erased gang violence from the communities, which strengthened Bukele’s popularity.

A “disheartening outlook”

The Legislative Assembly (Parliament) has extended the regime on 24 occasions for periods of 30 days and humanitarian organizations have received more than 6,000 complaints of abuses, including arbitrary detentions, deaths in state custody and torture.

For Antonio Palacios, from the Humanitarian Legal Aid (SJH), “the outlook is discouraging for people who are detained,” given that the reforms after the approval of the regime will lengthen provisional detention at least until the end of 2025 due to the extension of the investigation period.

“The emergency regime has been in place for two years now and if these people continue waiting until 2025, it will be practically four years that they will be imprisoned without anything having been proven,” Palacios lamented in statements to EFE.

He indicated that there are ““Also quite serious cases in which people have already been convicted without there being sufficient elements to prove their guilt or participation in a crime.”also noted that the NGO is aware of people with a judicial release order that the prison authorities refuse to comply with.

He warned that “The justice system is currently overwhelmed, there are no human resources to prosecute so many people” and they estimate that between 30,000 and 35,000 “They are innocent people.”

Only Legal Aid has received, according to Palacios told EFE, 7,950 cases of “innocent people” detained and has documented at least 236 deaths in state custody. Additionally, he has accompanied some 1,300 ‘habeas corpus‘before the Supreme Court of Justice, of which the 99% They have not received a response.

“I don’t want my son in a coffin”

Morena Meléndez does not know if her son is alive since April 2022, when he was detained near his home in the central town of Nuevo Cuscatlán by 8 police officers shortly after he returned from his job delivering medicines on a motorcycle.

The mother carries son Wilvis’s documents like a treasure. Sources: passports, endorsements that he was a beneficiary of a migration program to the United States and certifications from the Police and Penal Centers that show that he has no pending accounts with Justice nor has he been convicted. .

“You don’t get involved, old whore,” Morena remembers what one of the agents told her when she questioned the reason why they were holding her son, a similar response was given to the family’s grandmother.

Between insults, Morena said, they refused to see her son’s documents because: “That (young) monkey was going (arrested) because he didn’t like him”.

Without charges and without an arrest warrant, Wilvis was arrested, put in a patrol car and taken to prison. As the days passed, they charged him with the crime of illicit groups.

“I haven’t done anything, I don’t know why they take me“, his son told him on the last day he spoke with him. He remembers it pale, sad: “My son was crying, he turned to see me with a look that I will never forget.”

Since the day they took him to a prison, Morena has not seen him again. She describes him as an active young man, enthusiastic about video games, on which he took programming courses, in addition to pursuing his studies.

“They took him alive and I don’t want them to return him to me in a coffin (…) until now, I don’t know if my son is alive, I don’t know if he is in good health”Morena said.

She is part of the people who have turned to the Movement of Victims of the Regime (Movir) for help and says that she has known cases in which “The boys come out tortured” from jail.