In the days after 32-year-old Walter Vladimir Sandoval Penate’s March 30 arrest in El Refugio,El Salvador , his mother travelled to the public prosecutor’s office in a desperate search for information. On the fifth day, April 4, a car from a funeral home pulled up behind her as she arrived home.
“The car brought us the news that he had died,” the young man’s father, Saul Sandoval, told Al Jazeera.Authorities told the family that he had been in the process of being transferred from a jail cell in Ahuachapan to Izalco prison in Sonsonate, but he fainted and died before entering. According to a medical report reviewed by Al Jazeera, the cause of death was “chest trauma”. Photos of the body show deep cuts and bruises on his arms and around his knees.
“If he fainted, our question is: Where did all the injuries that he has come from?” Sandoval asked.His son is among at least 40 inmates who have died in state custody since El Salvador on March 27 imposed a state of exception suspending certain civil liberties, according to data from Amnesty International shared with Al Jazeera.
More than 40,000 people have since been arrested. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele called for the emergency measures as part of a crackdown on gangs, following a surge in homicides that left more than 80 people dead in a single March weekend.
Human rights groups say the policy has led to widespread human rights abuses, including deaths in state care as the already overpopulated prison system has extended even further past its breaking point.
“The stories coming out of the prisons are really dire,” Arjun Chaudhuri, a campaigner for Mexico and Central America with Amnesty International, told Al Jazeera. “There is no real access to basic human needs, like food or medical care, and there is also violence being exercised within the prisons. It paints a very bleak picture.”
This is a clear violation of the state’s responsibility to protect the inmates in its care, he added.The Salvadoran human rights organisation Cristosal says at least 14 in-custody deaths during the state of exception can be categorised as extrajudicial killings, due to evidence of violence or a lack of medical attention.
In the case of Walter Vladimir Sandoval Penate, witnesses said police beat the young man after he denied being a gang member, according to local media. His father said he had no gang ties.
Later in April, 37-year-old Mauricio Alberto Flores Sorto reportedly died after staff at the Izalco prison did not provide him with necessary medications for hypertension and anxiety. And on May 10, Carlos Wilfredo Sauceda Gonzalez and Sergio Alcides Natividad Calzadilla died in La Esperanza prison after having been beaten, Cristosal found.
El Salvador already had one of the highest imprisonment rates per capita in the world before the state of exception began, second only to the United States, according to the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative. In 2020, El Salvador’s prison system was about 35 percent over its maximum capacity of about 27,000 inmates, according to the World Prison Brief database. And the government’s inhumane prison enforcement tactics, which have included parading barely dressed inmates in front of cameras, had already gained scrutiny from human rights groups.
Overcrowding and poor prison conditions are common throughout Latin America’s prisons, according to Juan Pappier, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch who has been documenting arbitrary detentions during El Salvador’s state of exception.
“El Salvador has among the worst records in the region in terms of prison overcrowding,” Pappier told Al Jazeera. “And the mass arrests conducted during the state of emergency are only making it worse and worse.”
