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Trump, ‘irregular warfare,’ and El Salvador's mega-prison
Without due process, hundreds of Venezuelans living in the US have been arrested, slandered as terroristic criminals and sent flown in chains to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison under an obscure 18th-century law, reports JOHN PERRY
GLEEFULLY BRUTAL: Prison guards transfer deportees from the US, alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the ‘terrorism confinement’ prison known as Cecot, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 16 2025
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EL SALVADOR’S Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot) opened in 2023. It has the capacity for up to 40,000 prisoners, although is said to be only half-full.
Cecot was built to incarcerate alleged members of violent gangs, who by 2015 had made El Salvador the western hemisphere’s most dangerous country.
Dispensing with warrants and court hearings, in 2022 the government jailed almost 2 per cent of the population, many on the basis only of their tattoos. The official murder rate fell from 18 per day to one every three days.
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