Pallade Veneta - 'No way out': Grim conditions in El Salvador's mega-prison for gangs

Built to house El Salvador's most dangerous gangsters, conditions at the maximum-security "Terrorism Confinement Center" (CECOT) are slammed by rights groups as inhumane.

Yet US President Donald Trump has praised the tough tactics of his gang-busting Salvadoran counterpart Nayib Bukele as an "example" and is considering designating El Salvador a "safe third country" to which to deport undocumented migrants, according to US media reports.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit the country on his first trip to Central America starting later this week.

The sprawling CECOT, on the edge of a jungle about 75 kilometers (47 miles) southeast of the capital San Salvador, is the centerpiece of Bukele's war on street gangs.

Some 15,000 members of the MS-13 and rival Barrio 18 gangs are being held at the nearly two-year-old facility, which can hold up to 40,000.

They were rounded up under a state of emergency imposed by Bukele after a surge in gang violence in 2022.

Some are serving sentences of over 200 years.

Bukele's crackdown on gangs has been praised by many Salvadorans for leading to a drastic drop in the murder rate, but rights groups slam abuses in prisons, saying inmates are forced to confess and refused contact with their families and lawyers.

The inmates at CECOT leave their cells only when they have court hearings by video link from a room in the prison, or to exercise for half-an-hour a day in a large hallway.

They shower with water from a large basin inside their cells and collect water from a large plastic barrel to drink.

Their staple diet is beans or pasta, with the government expressly prohibiting meat.

About 1,000 prison officers, 600 soldiers and 250 riot police guard the facility where MS-13 and Barrio 18 members share cells, despite being mortal enemies.

They are watched 24 hours a day by CCTV cameras and guards.

AFP visited the prison with other international media on Monday.

During the tour, prison director Belarmino Garcia referred to the inmates as "psychopaths who will be difficult to rehabilitate," adding: "That's why they are here, in a maximum security prison that they will never leave."

Garcia ordered the inmates in one cell to take off their shirts to reveal bodies tattooed with intricate images of women, tombstones, and skulls and crosses as well as gang insignia.

- 'No way out' -

The MS-13 and Barrio 18 have terrorized El Salvador since the late 1990s in their fight for drug and extortion rackets.

They also have a presence in Guatemala and Honduras.

Speaking in a small room next to the cells, watched by a group of police officers, a 41-year-old nicknamed "Sayco" (pronounced "psycho") told AFP he regretted his violent past.

"We are in a maximum security prison where we know there is no way out," he said.

Marvin Medrano, serving a 100-year sentence for two murders, lifted his shirt to show AFP the initials "MS" for Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13, tattooed on his torso.

Medrano was born in El Salvador but spent part of his childhood in the United States, where he joined a gang aged about 12.

He returned to his homeland in 2001 to escape attempted murder charges and founded an MS-13 cell in the southwestern port city of La Libertad.

He lamented what he called his "bad decisions" and said he hoped his son, whose age he did not specify, would take a different path in life.

"I have lost my family, we've lost everything in prison," Medrano told the visiting reporters.

Over 80,000 Salvadorans have been detained since Bukele declared the state of emergency.

In November, the president acknowledged that 8,000 innocent people were among those rounded up. They have since been released.

The Socorro Juridico Humanitario rights group estimates that almost a third of those detained are innocent.

A.Rispoli--PV