[REVISION HISTORY]

El Salvador anti-gang crackdown and rights crisis

Updated 5 times since CLSTR started tracking revisions of this situation.

What changed

2026-09-13 14:47 UTC → 2026-09-15 06:51 UTC · added ~~removed~~

The state-of-emergency anti-gang campaign launched in March 2022 has continued to produce massive court rulings and high incarceration rates. By mid-2026, authorities reported over 92,000 arrests and a significant reduction in homicide rates, including a streak of over 1,100 days without a murder. Judicial proceedings have increasingly utilized mass-trial reforms to prosecute entire gang structures. In June 2026, a court sentenced 254 MS-13 members to up to 85 years in prison. Prosecutors have sought even more extreme penalties; in a trial involving 485 alleged MS-13 leaders, prosecutors requested sentences totaling thousands of years, noting that leaders “don’t have ten lives to serve these sentences.” Other mass rulings have seen sentences reaching up to 1,048 years for members of the El Gremio organization. In August 2026, the Fiscalía General de la República reported that at least 69 alleged gang members, including MS-13 members, were sentenced to terms of up to 85 years for crimes such as extortion and drug trafficking. Regarding the mass trial of 485 alleged MS-13 leaders, President Nayib Bukele compared the proceedings to the Nuremberg trials. This trial involves more than 47,420 criminal charges, including approximately 29,000 counts of homicide, femicide, forced disappearances, and trafficking. While sentencing for these leaders was expected in late August 2026, the presidency announced a postponement of the verdict without specifying the reasons. Human rights organizations continue to warn of a deepening crisis. Amnesty International stated that the scale of arbitrary detentions, torture, and disappearances could amount to “crimes against humanity.” International NGOs have also criticized the mass trial format, alleging it violates the defendants' right to a fair trial. Following constitutional reforms approved in April 2026 that removed the previous 60-year maximum sentence, El Salvador ~~issued its first~~ has begun issuing life imprisonment ~~sentence in September 2026.~~ sentences.

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