First 2000 inmates moved to El Salvador’s new gangster prison

The first 2,000 inmates of a brand new jail in-built El Salvador to accommodate greater than 40,000 suspected gangsters focused in President Nayib Bukele’s “war” on crime, have arrived on the facility.

Bukele tweeted on Friday that “at dawn, in a single operation, we transferred the first 2,000 members to the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT)” — which he claims is the biggest mega-prison within the Americas.

Bukele added: “This will be their new house, where they will live for decades, all mixed, unable to do any further harm to the population.”

The president posted a video exhibiting barefoot, tattooed males carrying solely white boxers, bent over and with their arms behind their shaven heads.

Here they had been stacked carefully collectively, every sitting together with his legs on both aspect of the person in entrance of him as armed guards in balaclavas look on.

They had been loaded onto buses, arms and ft in shackles, to be taken to the brand new jail in a convoy that included helicopters.

At the brand new facility, the lads had been equally stacked up earlier than being led in giant teams into their cells, the place they’re left sitting on the ground earlier than stacked steel beds with no mattresses seen.

“We are eliminating this cancer from society,” justice and safety minister Gustavo Villatoro mentioned on Twitter.

“Know that you will never walk out of CECOT, you will pay for what you are… cowardly terrorists,” he added.

READ MORE: NGOs report ‘widespread’ violations in El Salvador’s battle towards gangs

63,000 presumed gangsters detained 

Built on Bukele’s orders after he declared a “war” on gangs final March, the jail in Tecoluca, 74 kilometres southeast of the capital San Salvador, consists of eight buildings fabricated from bolstered concrete.

Each one has 32 cells of about 100 sq. metres, designed to carry “more than 100” inmates, in response to Public Works Minister Romeo Rodriguez.

Each cell has solely two sinks and two bogs.

There are solely 80 steel bunks for each 100 prisoners, and rights teams and observers have criticised the development as a violation of incarceration requirements.

“There will be no mattresses in the cells,” the jail warden — who wore a ski masks to guard his id — advised journalists when the mission was unveiled.

While the jail is provided with eating halls, train rooms and desk tennis tables, they’re completely for guards’ use.

Prisoners will go away the cell just for authorized hearings by videoconference, or to be punished in a windowless and unlit isolation cell.

Some 63,000 presumed gang members have been rounded up since Bukele declared a state of emergency months in the past, permitting arrests with out warrants within the violence-plagued nation.

READ MORE: El Salvadoran troops conduct second main gangs crackdown

Source: AFP