SAN SALVADOR.- More than 2,000 gang members who were imprisoned in different prisons in the country were transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), the megaprison symbol of the fight against gangs in The Savior, the president announced Najib Watch it.
“We transferred more than 2,000 gang members from the prisons of Izalco (west), Ciudad Barrios (east) and San Vicente (southeast), to Cecot,” said the president in his account on the social network X.
The Cecot, inaugurated at the beginning of 2022, has a capacity for 40,000 inmates and the Salvadoran Government assures that it is the “largest in America.”
According to official figures, until February of this year, 12,500 gang members from the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 were imprisoned in the prison, detained under an exceptional regime questioned by human rights organizations for the detention of “innocents who suffer.” in jail.
The emergency regime, under which more than 80,000 alleged gang members have been detained, was decreed by Congress at the request of Bukele in response to an escalation of violence that claimed the lives of 87 people between March 25 and 27, 2022.
In a video that Bukele posted on the
“There they will pay for the crimes committed against our people; cut off from the outside, without the possibility of leaving, nor of ordering crimes from prison,” said President Bukele.
The Cecot was built in Tecoluca, 74 km southeast of San Salvador and occupies 166 hectares, in 23 of which eight pavilions were built within a perimeter with 19 surveillance towers.
Between the seven security rings of the prison, built at a cost not revealed by the government, there is a concrete wall 11 meters high and 2.1 kilometers long topped by electrified wire fences.
There are devices to block communications with the outside.
The prisoners, who are guarded by 250 police officers and 600 soldiers, sleep in bunk beds made of steel sheets, without mattresses or pillows.
Source: With information from AFP
