On Wednesday in El Salvador, a small state in Central America and one of the most violent in the world, more than 2,000 inmates accused of being part of criminal gangs were transferred to the huge new prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), much criticized because it for very small prisoners: lower than those envisaged for the transport of livestock according to European standards, to understand each other.
The prison, which opened this year, was created by the populist government of Nayib Bukele to house prisoners arrested for their activities in criminal gangs, one of the main problems in the country. The transfer of more than 2,000 detainees on Wednesday is the second in less than a month: at the end of February, another 2,000 people had been transferred to CECOT. In total, the prison can accommodate up to 40,000 inmates (the largest in Italy, the Milanese Opera prison, holds about 1,300, and the total places available would be 918).
Like the one at the end of February, this transfer was also advertised by the government with a celebratory video which shows prisoners with their hair shaved off, bare chested, handcuffed or with their hands on their heads running in paths prepared by riot police, only to be herded into the center of a large room in the prison. Meanwhile Bukele also extended the duration of the emergency measures in place for more than a year to fight criminal gangs, which in recent months had been much criticized because in practice they had given the police the power to make arbitrary arrests.
Also on this occasion the Minister of Justice of Bukele’s government, Gustavo Villatoro, made it clear that he had no intention of releasing the prisoners from prison: announcing their transfer he said that “they will never come back” to the streets. In the past he had said that prison served to “eliminate this cancer from society”.
– Read also: El Salvador’s huge new prison