On April 7, 2024, José Santos Alfaro’s family received a letter from a judge that read: “Immediately release yourself.” They had been waiting for that letter since January of this year, when the community leader was detained by terrorist groups in Chalatenango, a department in the north of El Salvador known for being the stronghold of the guerrilla in the eighties.
Letter in hand, the family went to the prison to look for him. Afternoon fell and soon night, but Santos Alfaro did not come out.
For the prison authorities, a judge’s directive – which according to Salvadoran laws is mandatory – was not enough. They told their relatives that more was missing. An own investigation to verify it. It was then that they returned home without Santos Alfaro.
This is not an isolated case. In El Salvador there have been prisoners who even died waiting for the prison authorities to decide to obey the judges’ orders. That was the case of Luis Armando Rodríguez, 52, who died on June 21, 2024, a month after a judge ordered his release to the authorities of the prison where he was held.
It also happened to Dina Hernández, 28, who although she did not die, it was as if it had happened. She was 35 weeks pregnant when the police took her to prison for alleged illicit groups. One of the limited rights in the emergency regime – in force in El Salvador since March 2022 – is that of free association, and Hernández has always been a human rights activist in his community.
Although a judge granted him freedom 24 hours after his arrest, Hernández did not leave jail. Three weeks later, her family learned that the baby she was carrying died in prison, and they could only collect her small corpse. It is not known if Hernández has received postnatal care. Nor when his release order will become effective.
The files of the exception regime have total reservation. According to lawyer testimonies published by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in its September report, all cases are now reserved for “public order.” This is despite the fact that the only cases allowed to reserve files are in cases that affect public morality, according to the Penal Code.
There is also no access to visits or for family members to access information about the health status of the detainees. “The Commission recalls that solitary confinement must be an exceptional measure, since it can generate a situation of extreme psychological and moral suffering for the detained person,” the IACHR cited in a report.
In March 2022, El Salvador launched a police, military, and judicial offensive against the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs, two criminal organizations that for years extorted and murdered thousands of Salvadorans. This offensive was an exceptional regime that has allowed without hindrance the capture of some 80,000 people accused of being gang members. Among these, thousands who were not captured have been captured.
Given the number of cases with release letters not complied with by Salvadoran prisons, the human rights organization Socorro Jurídico Humanitario has given notice on its digital media so that relatives of inmates with release orders not executed can go to its offices.
“Those wardens who do not obey court orders must be prosecuted for the crimes of undue limitations on individual freedom, failure to fulfill duties and disobedience,” the organization said in a statement.
At the end of July, several Salvadoran officials, including the director of Salvadoran prisons, Osiris Luna, were reported to the Prosecutor’s Office for crimes against humanity.
“They are not warnings, they are formal complaints with first and last name against officials who have clearly violated our Constitution, as well as those who have refused to release people who already have a letter of freedom and who are not gang members,” said Jayme Magaña, lawyer specialized in human rights.
At least 7,000 innocent people have entered Salvadoran prisons. This information was provided by the head of Security, Gustavo Villatoro, in August 2023, when the number of people who were released was last reported after it was proven that they were not gang members. Since then, the State has not updated the figure. Nor has it clarified whether it will compensate for moral and material damages to those who were unjustly imprisoned.
According to the human rights organization based in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, Cristosal, the first two years of the emergency regime portray a model of justice designed to impose, on both criminals and innocent people, unjust punishment dependent on the word of their captors, such as police or soldiers, who have sometimes taken citizens to prison for appearing “nervous” at checkpoints.
“There are relatives of detained people who still believe that their close people will be released from prison in six months because they are innocent. Hopelessness comes when this does not happen and they do not even manage to have communication with the detainees or information about their cases,” they point out in their report. Silence is not an option.
Before the emergency regime, Salvadoran prisons held around 19,000 gang members. To date, it is not known how many of those detained under the regime are members of gangs. Nayib Bukele’s government only talks about what has been achieved to date, a historic reduction in homicidal violence that has turned El Salvador into one of the countries with the lowest homicide rate in the region.
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