El Salvador’s prisons searched after new extension of exception system

After the ruling party and its allies in Congress approved on Tuesday a new extension of the emergency regime for militant gangs, penitentiary agents and the Police Order Maintenance Unit (UMO) searched all the prisons in El Salvador this Wednesday.

The police indicated this in a message on social networks

He said that “these surprise searches are necessary so that prisons never again become universities of crime.”

In videos shared by police, prison guards can be seen checking cells, clothing and toiletries at the Terrorism Confinement Center (SECOT) and the Ciudad Barrios, Zacatecoluca and La Esperanza prisons, which are close to San Salvador.

The Directorate General of Penal Code (DGCP) also said this in a message in Marionna.

The searches came after El Salvador’s Congress, with a large pro-government majority, on Tuesday night approved the twenty-second extension of emergency rule, which suspends constitutional guarantees for a period of 30 days.

The extension of the emergency rule, imposed through March 2022 following a rise in incidents of killings caused by gangs, was approved with 67 votes of 84 deputies and despite criticism from the opposition.

The new extension of the measure, which has become the Bukele government’s main security action, will come into force on January 12, ahead of publication in the Official Gazette, and will remain in effect until February 10.

Also in the context of these searches, Nayib Bukele, President of Salvador and candidate for immediate re-election by the Nuevas Ideas (NI) party, published a video on X in which he recalled a message given in May 2023 in which inter alia Among other things, he said the government would do what “is best for Salvadorans, no matter what the IACHR says.”

“A while back… apply today,” the President wrote along with the video.

In that intervention, Bukele explained that if the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) “stands on the side of criminals in El Salvador, do not doubt that they are also on the side of criminals in their own countries and what is going to happen That “the governments of their countries will be afraid to fight crime so as not to face sanctions from the IACHR.” efe