The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukelegave this Monday an ultimatum to the gangs considered responsible for 87 homicides in three days, under the threat of further increasing the punishments of its more than 16,000 imprisoned members.
“Stop killing already or they [los encarcelados] they are going to pay for it too,” Bukele wrote on Twitter, and accompanied his publication with the video of the jail raid where agents drag half-naked prisoners out of their cells, force them to run, and search them in the courtyards.
In the images, the uniformed men rush the inmates, handcuffed, barefoot, bare-chested and only wearing a white swimsuit. Some of them fall on the way. Hundreds are filmed kneeling, one glued to the other.
The president’s reaction comes a day after the national declaration of a state of emergency, after a wave of homicides allegedly ordered by gangs Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18.
The emergency regime restricts civil liberties and expands the powers of the police and the army in the control of public order.
“We have 16,000 homeboys (gang members) in our power, apart from the 1,000 arrested these days,” Bukele recalled.
The gang members Since Sunday they have been subjected to a strict state of emergency in prisons, which translates, among other measures, into permanent confinement in their cells.
“We seized everything from them, even their sleeping mats, we also rationed their food and now they will no longer see the sun,” Bukele emphasized.
The gang Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, among others, have some 70,000 members in El Salvador. According to the authorities, they operate through homicides, extortion, drug trafficking and other illegal activities.
The Savior closed 2021 with the lowest homicide rate since the end of the civil war in 1992, with 18 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to official data. The total number of homicides, 1,147, also represented a reduction compared to 2020, when there were 1,341.
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