Salvador: “8,000” innocents released after being wrongly arrested

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele acknowledged Tuesday that “8,000” people had been released after being wrongly imprisoned as part of the massive fight against gangs he launched in 2022.

“We have released 8,000 people. And we will free 100% of the innocent,” assured the leader during a prison visit to Costa Rica, alongside his counterpart Rodrigo Chaves.

According to Socorro Juridico Humanitario, an NGO, of the 83,000 people arrested without a judicial warrant under an exceptional regime in force since March 2022 in El Salvador, at least 30,000 are innocent.

“It happens everywhere”

Nayib Bukele formally contested this figure of people wrongly incarcerated, believing that it was “invented” by “left-wing” organizations. “Nowhere in the world is the police perfect,” the leader stressed, arguing that “innocent people being arrested happens everywhere.”

Many families in El Salvador have no news of loved ones arbitrarily imprisoned, not knowing whether they are still alive or not. Prison visits are prohibited and places of detention are not notified.

The organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as well as local NGOs have reported more than 300 deaths in custody since the start of the operation.

Thanks to mass arrests, the homicide rate in El Salvador fell to 2.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023 compared to 18 in 2021, after reaching 105 in 2015, a record, argues Nayib Bukele.

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