Already a subscriber? Make sure to log into your account before viewing this content. You can access your account by hitting the “login” button on the top right corner. Still unable to see the content after signing in? Make sure your card on file is up-to-date.
Venezuela has announced that they are launching a formal investigation into El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and other top officials over allegations of systemic torture and human rights abuses against 252 Venezuelan migrants who were deported from the United States and imprisoned in El Salvador.
Some shit you should know before you read: If you’re unaware, El Salvador operates a maximum-security prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which has become a symbol of President Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gang violence. Opened in early 2023, the facility houses up to 40,000 inmates and is considered one of the largest prisons in the Americas. Designed with extreme security in mind, CECOT is surrounded by multiple layers of barbed-wire fencing, surveillance drones, and heavily armed guards, with no direct access to visitors or legal counsel. Inmates live under strict conditions, sleeping on steel bunks with no mattresses, blankets, or access to any technology. Bukele has touted the facility as central to his anti-crime campaign, which has led to a dramatic reduction in homicide rates (down more than 70% since the start of his crackdown). However, human rights groups and critics within El Salvador warn that mass arrests under the state of emergency have led to the detention of thousands of innocent people without charges or due process.
What’s going on now: In a notable development, Venezuela confirmed that it was opening an investigation into alleged human rights abuses suffered by 252 of its citizens who were detained in El Salvador after being deported from the United States. Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced the probe during a press conference in Caracas, stating that the detainees were subjected to “systemic torture” inside El Salvador’s high-security CECOT prison. According to Saab, the abuse included “sexual assaults, beatings, the use of pellet guns, and psychological torture,” as well as being “fed rotten food, denied medical care, and treated without anesthesia.“
Saab presented video testimonies and photos that purportedly show bruises, scars, missing teeth, and other signs of abuse. One former detainee, Andry Hernandez Romero, said in a recorded statement, “We were going through torture, physical aggressions, psychological aggressions. I was sexually abused.”
Saab revealed that his office had collected hundreds of formal complaints of mistreatment and called on international institutions (including the International Criminal Court) to launch their own investigations into the conduct of El Salvador’s authorities.
The Venezuelan government also named three top Salvadoran officials in its investigation: President Nayib Bukele, Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro, and Director of Prisons Osiris Luna Meza. Venezuela is accusing them of authorizing or facilitating the detention and abuse of the migrants, who were flown from the US to El Salvador in March as suspected gang members (a charge denied by many of their families). The Venezuelan government claims the group was effectively “kidnapped” after the US and El Salvador made a bilateral agreement to detain the men without due process.
In a statement, El Salvador’s President made a brief statement on social media, suggesting that Venezuela’s outrage was politically motivated. “The Maduro regime was satisfied with the swap deal; that’s why they accepted it,” Bukele wrote. “Now they scream their outrage, not because they disagree with the deal but because they just realized they ran out of hostages from the most powerful country in the world.” His administration has previously defended the prison, insisting that all prisoners are treated humanely and that legal standards are upheld “without distinction of nationality.”
