The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who 10 months ago launched a “war” against gangs, presented “America’s Largest” Prison.where he will lock up 40,000 suspected gang members.
The mega prison was built in an isolated rural area in a valley near Tecoluca, 74km southeast of San Salvador, and was inspected by Bukele.
The property of 166 hectares it has about ten pavilions that occupy 23 hectares, public works minister Romeo Rodríguez explained to a national radio and television network.
Called the “Center for the Confinement of Terrorism” by the government, it has surveillance systems with video circuits and scanners to control who enters.
“Any person belonging to a terrorist structure is the one who will enter this detention center,” said Deputy Minister of Justice and Public Security, Osiris Luna.
It is “the largest prison in all of America,” Minister Rodríguez said.
an impregnable prison
The prison has a Perimeter wall of 2.1 kmwhich will be guarded day and night by 600 soldiers and 250 policemen. Inside, security will be entrusted to the guards of the General Directorate of Penal Centers.
The cells are of reinforced concrete and have thick steel bars. The prison has its own wells for the extraction of drinking water.
Luna anticipated that the detainees they will have to work in this prison.
Bukele said that previous Salvadoran governments “had gang members (prisoners) with prostituteswith PlayStation equipment, with screens, with mobile phones, with computers, rewarding the offender.”
The president did not specify when the first of nearly 63,000 suspected gang members detained as part of the gang war will be transferred to the mega prison.
Massive arrests, criticized by human rights organizations, are protected by an emergency regime that allows arrests without a warrant. It was approved by Congress at Bukele’s request in response to a murder escalation that claimed the lives of 87 people from March 25 to 27.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Friday denounced “extreme overcrowding” in Salvadoran prisons following arrests without warrants of suspects.
The country’s twenty prisons currently have the capacity to do so 30,000 prisoners.
Bukele had originally said the mega jail would be finished in September. The authorities have not explained the reasons for this delay.
AFP agency.
GML extension
Source: Clarin
