Inmates in ElSalvador tortured/strangled-hellish conditions in Bukele's prisons

Summary

Dozens of inmates died as a result of torture, beatings, mechanical suffocation via strangulation or wounds or were left to die because of lack of medical attention. That is the primary result of an exhaustive investigation by Cristosal, the primary civil society human rights organization in El Salvador, after a year of the state of exception implemented by the government of president Nayib Bukele in his so-called “war on gangs.”The report, published on Monday, is the clearest investigation to date. Its results are terrifying. To write it, the institution interviewed hundreds of people who were imprisoned for months during the state of exception and were freed after being declared innocent, as well as relatives of inmates who died in prison during the same period. Cristosal also contrasted the testimonies with medical forensic documents, police documents and photographs. Authorities have withheld official information and have insisted that all deaths within prisons are from natural causes.The document presents stories from survivors who recount the torture they experienced within the prison. For exmaple, they were forced to pick food off of the floor with their mouths, given electric shocks and exposed to untreated epidemics of skin fungus.“The massive and systemic violations are now a state policy. The suspension of rights and militarization is not an exception anymore, but a norm that affects the lives of all Salvadorans,” Noah Bullock, director of Cristosal, told EL PAÍS.Executions in prisonsCristal has documented the death of 153 prisoners in state custody between March 27, 2022 and March 27, 2023, all detained in the same period. Of those, 29 died violent deaths and 46 “probable violent deaths” or under “suspicions of criminality.” Since March 23, more cases of inmate deaths, which do not enter into the previous count, have been reported.Among those 75 cases, the investigation points out as a “common pattern” the presence of lacerations, hematomas caused by bea...