Wednesday, April 22, 2026 - Nearly 490 alleged members of the powerful Central American gang Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), including several alleged leaders, went on trial collectively in El Salvador on Monday, April 20, accused of 29,000 murd£rs.
The country is conducting mass trials of thousands of
suspected gang members, many of whom have spent years in prison without charge
or visiting rights, as part of President Nayib Bukele's anti-gang crackdown.
The Attorney General's Office said 486 suspected MS-13
members were on trial for 47,000 crimes committed between 2012 and 2022,
including 29,000 homicides.
El Salvador's court system said the trial included 'members
of the national leadership, street-level leaders, program coordinators from
across the country, and founders of' MS-13.
Salvadoran authorities accuse the group of a range of
crimes, including the k!lling of 87 people in a single weekend in March 2022.
In the wake of those killings, Bukele declared a 'war' on
gangs, which he said controlled 80 per cent of Salvadoran territory.
MS-13 is charged with the crime of rebellion 'because they
sought to... establish a parallel state,' the Attorney General's Office said.
'We are going to put them on trial, and we are going to
settle a historic debt,' prosecutors said.
Bukele in 2022 imposed a state of emergency, which has been
used to arrest more than 91,000 suspected gang members, including thousands of
people who were later declared innocent.
Rights groups, however, have denounced gross human rights
abuses, including a lack of due process for the detainees, reports of torture,
and more than 500 deaths in prison.
The fates of the detainees are now being decided in mass
trials, with anonymous judges handing down one-size-fits-all punishments to
large groups of defendants following the proceedings via video-link from
prison.
MS-13 and the rival Barrio 18 gang operate drug trafficking
rings and extortion rackets across Central America.
The Trump administration has declared the two groups - among
others - as terrorist organisations, designations it has used in part to
justify deadly military strikes on alleged drug-running boats.
The two gangs were born among Salvadoran youth on the
streets of Los Angeles and then spread back to El Salvador, where they
terrorised the population for more than three decades.
Bukele has accused them of murd£ring 200,000 people over
three decades, including about 80,000 who disappeared without a trace.
State prosecutors said they had 'ample evidence to request
the maximum sentences' against the defendants, without specifying whether that
meant life imprisonment.
At the opening of the trial, the judge stated that armed
groups had disturbed 'the peace of the Salvadoran population and the security
of the state' for decades, and would be tried 'with the full force of the law.'
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) and regional NGO
Cristosal have criticised the mass trials, warning of the risk of innocent
people being made to pay for the crimes of the guilty.
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