Nayib Bukele speaks from the terrorism confinement center for El Salvador and Latin America

The prison that Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, presented through his social networks is one of the most impressive centers of its kind in the world. This is the Terrorism Confinement Center, where the country’s gang members will be imprisoned. A huge complex that will be guarded by more than 600 guards and that has its own water and electricity plant. It is so large that it will accommodate more than 40,000 prisoners.

It is far from any city for the total isolation of the prisoners from society. The construction area is equivalent to seven times the largest stadium in the country.

According to the president’s announcement, it will be the largest prison in the entire continent. In said penitentiary center will be the most dangerous of all the gangs, for high commands such as gunmen, but also for other criminals of said criminal structures.

Nayib Bukele walked through it step by step, along with the leaders of the guard who will be in front of it to protect it. “Before, the prisoners had prostitutes and a play station,” said the president on that tour.

That guided tour and presented on television and on the president’s social networks showed the magnitude of this complex. For example, the concrete walls that prevent prisoners from escaping are 11 meters high. “Not even a car crashing there breaks it. It is a first-world prison, to protect us from criminals,” said one of the prison leaders. The jail has seven fences, including a virtual one for surveillance.

The watchtowers, meanwhile, are in each of the prison rings. “It would be impossible for a prisoner to get out,” adds the officer who shows the prison. The jail works with four external rings.

The technology to enter the jail is state of the art with very powerful scanners. “You can see the lungs,” warns the president. The guard explains that this ensures that no one gets anything inside their bodies. “Previous governments had handed over the prisons to these terrorist groups,” warns the man taking the tour.

There is also an armory area, which gives the guards maximum protection for any disturbance that may arise. Preventive intelligence and counterintelligence sessions are also contemplated so that no order or communication abroad does not leave the prison. The jail is so hermetic that the prisoners will not even go out to court hearings, but will be able to connect from there.

The president showed what the dining areas, bathrooms and the facilities that the guards will have will be like. “Before, instead of punishing the bad, they punished the good, they rewarded the criminal,” Bukele said to express that the State forces that work in that prison have a dignified life.

Inside the prison facilities, there are also work areas for the prisoners, with which during their sentence they will have to work in different manual trades to try to compensate even a little for the damage they did to society with their criminal activities.

As for the cells, they are made with reinforced steel and internationally certified locks. Similarly, they have two pools with water and two toilets for each cell, Therefore, convicted gang members will only be able to leave the bars to work inside the penitentiary, attend their court hearings in a virtual room, or go to the isolation zone as punishment.

Said punishment cells do not have access to natural or artificial light and are designed for when there are disturbances or fights inside the prison. While on the outskirts of the prison, both police and military will guard the perimeter with more than 600 security officials from El Salvador.

The numbers of the war against gangs

Almost 63,000 suspected gang members have been detained in El Salvador as part of the “war” against these gangs launched 10 months ago by President Nayib Bukele, Justice and Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro reported on Monday.

“At the moment there are more than 62,975 terrorists (gang members) who have been detained,” Villatoro told the state television channel 10. The massive arrests, criticized by human rights organizations, are protected by an emergency regime that allows arrests without a warrant, approved by Congress at the request of Bukele in response to a homicidal escalation that claimed the lives of 87 people from 25 to 27 last March.

Bukele reported a few days ago that some 3,000 “innocents” detained under the emergency regime had been released. Before March 2022, there were 16,000 imprisoned gang members in El Salvador’s jails, belonging to rival gangs: the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18, with its two factions Sureños and Revolucionarios.

In the 10 months of fighting the gangs, the police have seized 2,218 firearms, 2,799 vehicles, 15,038 cell phones and $1.6 million in cash, according to the minister.

*With information from AFP.