Williams Díaz was detained by soldiers more than three years ago while on his way to work. Today, in El Salvador’s mega-prison for gang members, he awaits his collective trial. He is innocent and will be judged alongside criminals, his mother laments. Mass trials are moving forward in El Salvador against some 91,000 people detained under the state of exception imposed by President Nayib Bukele four years ago in his anti-gang war.
Some will pay for others. If they convict one, they convict the whole group. The innocent will pay for the guilty, says Gladis Villatoro, a 55-year-old pupusa vendor, in her modest home in Soyapango, 20 kilometers east of San Salvador. Not far from there, Reynaldo Santos, a 58-year-old baker, fears that his son, one of the 8,000 defendants being prosecuted while free, will be jailed again for trial when he goes to court to sign in.
It is Russian roulette, anguish, an ordeal, Santos says, explaining that Jonathan was detained while playing the video game Fortnite at home, allegedly because police considered him a gang member. The attorney general’s office promised 3,000 indictments in the first quarter to try alleged gang members in large groups based on the areas where they operated.
Vice President Félix Ulloa considers the trials innovative. He argues that responsibility should be collective and that sentences should be applied according to the hierarchy within each gang clique or cell. Ten days ago, El Salvador approved punishment of life imprisonment for terrorists, the term the government uses for gang members, including minors.
The prisons will become human pits, warns criminal lawyer Roxana Cardona.
Factory of convictions
Jonathan, a 24-year-old maquila worker, was grouped into a Mara Salvatrucha clique with about 80 detainees. Williams, a 35-year-old air-conditioning technician, was placed in one linked to Barrio 18. According to their parents and documents seen by AFP, neither had a criminal record.
From the moment they group them together, they are declaring them guilty. There is a presumption of guilt, not innocence, said one lawyer who represents 45 prisoners, arguing that the prosecutor’s office opted for mass trials because it cannot investigate so many detainees individually.
Dressed in white clothing and seated in rows, the accused follow the proceedings virtually from several prisons while the trial takes place in a courtroom for organized crime cases. The judge, prosecutor and lawyers see them on screens.
Recent reforms to the organized crime law do not individualize criminal responsibility and eliminated the hearing in which evidence is evaluated. That means defendants go into these trials practically already convicted, according to lawyers interviewed by AFP, who spoke anonymously for safety reasons.
These are just a formality. This is not innovative, it is a massive factory of convictions. There are already about 20,000 grouped together, said the defense attorney for a vegetable vendor who was sentenced in February to 30 years in prison along with 163 other people.
Before trial, there is a hearing in which an imprisoned gang member with a concealed face testifies about the accused, often without evidence or by making false claims to reduce his own sentence, according to lawyers. Sometimes defense attorneys are not called to that hearing and, since they do not know the specific accusation, they cannot prepare for trial, they explain.
It is a regression of the law, says the vegetable vendor’s attorney, who saw his client for barely a minute before the trial. I only had time to ask how he was and tell him: your family loves you and knows you are innocent.
They will never get out
Information is scarce because the cases are under seal and communication is completely cut off. Villatoro’s anguish has grown since she learned that her son has kidney failure. That was a year ago and I still do not know how he is, she whispers so that Williams’s six-year-old son, running around the house, will not hear.
Bukele, who controls all branches of the state, remains popular for ending the terror imposed by gangs, but NGOs report 500 deaths in prison, torture and thousands of wrongful arrests under the state of exception, which allows arrests without a court order. Human Rights Watch documented detentions triggered by anonymous calls, neighborhood disputes, or to help police meet quotas in exchange for bonuses.
Villatoro and Santos say their sons were among those quota arrests, and they went into debt to pay for a lawyer. But many detainees have only a public defender. They handle 150 cases or more. They do not know the life of each detainee. On top of that, the judges are anonymous, afraid, or loyal to the government, said a private lawyer who represents about a dozen people.
With the reforms, many defendants could spend more than five years without a conviction, since prosecutors can keep proceedings open until 2027 in order to add more charges or defendants. These trials lack the basic guarantees of due process, and that increases the risk of convicting innocent people, Juan Pappier, deputy director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch, said.
Villatoro cannot stop thinking about Bukele’s promise that those inside the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as Cecot, where Williams is being held, will never get out. But God will work a miracle, she says with confidence. Santos says his son suffers from anxiety and depression. Holding a thick stack of documents, he says through tears that all they ask is to be allowed to defend themselves. We just want this nightmare to end.
