Photo: JESSICA ORELLANA/REUTERS / copyright
The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, inaugurated on Tuesday (01.31.2023), without allowing access to the press, the Terrorism Containment Center, which would have capacity for 40,000 gang members and whose construction began in the context of an exception regime in force since March.
In a national media chain, the Bukele government released a video showing the president touring the prison with a group of officials.
It was on July 21 that the president stated in a message on Twitter that this prison “will have space for 40,000 terrorists, who will be cut off from the outside world”, without knowing the cost of the work.
The Minister of Public Works, Romeo Rodríguez, said that this would be “the largest prison in all of America” and that “it would be impossible for an inmate to leave” the compound, which has 23 hectares of construction and will be guarded by some 600 soldiers and 250 policemen.
In the context of the exception regime, a measure called by Bukele “war” against the gangsmore than 62,900 alleged gang members have been arrested and more than 7,400 complaints of human rights violations have been filed.
This regime suspends the right to defense and the inviolability of telecommunications, also extends the period of preventive detention to 15 days, when it is normally 3 days.
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