Photos: Inside El Salvador’s new ‘mega prison’ for gang members

The primary 2,000 inmates of a brand new jail in-built El Salvador to accommodate greater than 40,000 suspected gang members focused in President Nayib Bukele’s “battle” on crime have arrived on the facility.

Bukele tweeted on Friday: “At daybreak, in a single operation, we transferred the primary 2,000 members to the Middle for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT),” which he stated is the biggest jail within the Americas.

“This will probably be their new home, the place they are going to stay for many years, all blended, unable to do any additional hurt to the inhabitants,” the president stated.

Human rights organizations stated the state of emergency Bukele has used to make the arrests has led to severe human rights violations. Amongst them are “mass arbitrary detention, torture and different types of ill-treatment in opposition to detainees, deaths in custody, and abuse-ridden prosecutions”, Human Rights Watch stated in an announcement.

Bukele posted a video exhibiting barefoot, tattooed males sporting solely white boxers, bent over with their fingers behind their shaven heads. Every inmate sat together with his legs on both aspect of the person in entrance of him as armed guards in balaclavas guarded the prisoners.

They had been loaded onto buses, fingers and ft in shackles, to be taken to the brand new jail in a convoy that included helicopters.

On the new facility, the boys had been equally lined up earlier than being led in massive teams into their cells, the place they’re left sitting on the ground subsequent to stacked steel beds. The warden advised journalists whereas unveiling the ability that no mattresses could be supplied.

“We’re eliminating this most cancers from society,” Justice and Public Safety Minister Gustavo Villatoro stated on Twitter concerning the inmates.

“Know that you’ll by no means stroll out of CECOT, you’ll pay for what you might be … cowardly terrorists,” he stated.