These chilling photos capture the harrowing realities inside the “hell on Earth” jails in El Salvador – where Donald Trump is set to send the US’ violent criminals.
Dozens of inmates are crammed into cells in the prisons in the Central American country. Sentences range from 60 to more than 1,000 years for those incarcerated at Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT), the newest of the jails there.
One of the world’s biggest prisons, with a 40,000 capacity (equivalent to almost half the UK’s current prison population), CECOT was built two years ago. It now houses many thousands of the worst of the worst gangsters. In that timeframe, more than 200 prisoners have died in the slammer, it is thought.
For 23-and-a-half hours of the day, the men in CECOT are obliged to squat on mattress-less metal bunks, stacked four-storeys high, like shelves in a B&Q store. They are allowed to speak only in whispers.
The three meals a day are always rice and beans, pasta and a boiled egg. Their water is rationed by the guards who hand it to them and they use a communal lavatory. They are only permitted to scuttle out of their cages, shackled hand and foot with heads bowed low, for a small number of reasons.
David Jones became the first British journalist to visit CECOT and, in a chilling first-person piece for Mail Online, the reporter recounts his experience. He wrote: “Having visited the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and the Robben Island prison where Nelson Mandela was held, the system at CECOT certainly seems harsher. Terrorists held in ‘Gitmo’ are at least afforded some privileges and can undergo rehabilitation programs.
“They have access to books and writing materials, can interact with one another, exercise in the fresh air, communicate with family members, and look forward to occasional visits. In CECOT none of those things are permitted. The sole aim is subjugation.
“They are evacuated when the guards charge into the module brandishing machine guns to stage a ‘forced intervention’ and search their bunks. While this clean sweep takes place they must crouch on the floor in perfect rows, with their legs wrapped tightly around the man in front of them and their head pressed against his bare back, forming a human jigsaw puzzle. Anyone who spoils the pattern by fidgeting receives a sharp baton jab to the ribs.
“Shut away in this void, in a subtropical volcanic valley two hours from the capital, San Salvador, with no wifi or mobile signals, these men have effectively ceased to exist. They are the living dead.”
By 2015, El Salvador was the world’s murder capital, with 106 killings for every 100,000 of its six million population: a rate more than 100 times higher than Britain’s. However, El Salvador now has one of the lowest murder rates, projecting a ratio of less than one per 100,000 this year.
Prisons like CECOT are, it is said, serving their purpose then. Mr Trump’s intention to send criminals of all nationalities to the jails, though, has divided opinion. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele “has agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world.”
The US leader believes the move will help make both countries “stronger, safer, and more prosperous” but little El Salvador, on the Pacific coast, has a population of just six million – a tiny fraction of the approximate 334 million living in the US.