- By Leire Ventas
- Special correspondent, BBC News Mundo, El Salvador
Image source, Lissette Lemus/BBC
In the cells, the prisoners sleep in bunk beds with four tiers
Hundreds of eyes are upon us. With shaven heads, dressed in pristine white, and heavily tattooed, the prisoners know they are being watched and return the gaze from the other side of the bars.
We are in Cecot (Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism), a maximum security jail built a year ago by the Salvadoran government to imprison “high-ranking” members of the country’s main gangs.
A gargantuan complex constructed in the middle of nowhere, it symbolises President Nayib Bukele’s controversial security policy more than any other project.
Critics of the president have called it a “black hole of human rights”, where international guidelines on prisoner rights are flouted.
Miguel Sarre, a former member of the United Nations Subcommittee for the Prevention of Torture, has described it as a “concrete and steel pit”.
And referring to the fact that no-one has so far been released from the jail, Mr Sarre warned Cecot appeared to be used “to dispose of people without formally applying the death penalty”.
But in a nation where notorious gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha and the two factions of Barrio 18 – the Revolucionarios and the Sureños – have wreaked deadly havoc, the jail has been a major reason behind President Bukele’s huge popularity and his success in the polls.
“Here are the psychopaths, the…
