On May 16, 2023, the family of Luis Armando Rodríguez, a 52-year-old Salvadoran man imprisoned in Quezaltepeque under the state of exception, received a document stating that a judge had ordered his immediate release. María Rodríguez, the mother of the detainee, still remembers “the profound joy” of that moment, and how, in the weeks to come, her elation withered into frustration and sadness. “Our lawyer went [to the prison], but they wouldn’t release him. The next day, they said they couldn’t release him because he was a prisoner of the state of exception.” Time passed, until, on June 19, 2023, Rodríguez was transferred from Quezaltepeque Prison to the Rosales National Hospital in San Salvador. He died two days later.
El Salvador’s Bureau of Prisons (DGCP) committed several crimes in failing to comply with the release order, human rights organizations say. And Rodriguez’s case is not the only one. Through a review of court records and interviews with family members, El Faro has documented ten other cases in which the Bureau of Prisons delayed or failed to comply with release orders that were signed and sealed by courts specializing in organized crime, without providing any justification.
In a system shrouded in state secrecy, and in light of these cases and the statements of organizations advocating for the victims of the state of exception for more than two years, it appears that the practice of denying or delaying release is not an aberration, but a pattern.
The Attorney General’s Office keeps all cases related to the state of exception sealed from the public, claiming that disclosing this information could “provoke panic in the population.” With this as its justification, the state is concealing hundreds of cases marred by insufficient or false evidence, including police reports created after the time of detention, or cases in which officers provided vague and ambiguous justifications for the arrest, such as a detainee appearing “nervous” or “suspicious.”
In three of the 11 non-release cases documented by El Faro, the person died in prison, despite having obtained a court order granting their freedom. In three other cases, the person was arrested and charged with the crime of illicit association shortly after being released for the exact same crime. In one case, the person was granted a release order but is still in detention, and his family is afraid to talk about the case for fear of reprisals by the government of Nayib Bukele.
Three other individuals are still being held despite their release orders, according to a complaint filed with the Attorney General’s Office by the Salvadoran human rights organization Socorro Jurídico Humanitario (SJH). The last case documented by El Faro involves a minor who, despite being declared innocent by a judge, was kept in detention by the Bureau of Prisons for two months without justification.
Five of the 11 cases documented by El Faro were the subject of complaints filed with the Attorney General’s Office by SJH on July 22, 2024. “You are violating human rights and committing crimes, including forced disappearance, torture, and the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners, and you are disobeying court orders and denying support to victims. All of these are crimes,” rebuked Ingrid Escobar, the director of SJH, minutes before entering the prosecutor’s office in Antiguo Cuscatlán to denounce multiple legislative deputies, along with El Salvador’s minister of security, Gustavo Villatoro, Bureau of Prisons director Osiris Luna, and the director of Izalco Prison.
SJH claims that the director of Izalco Prison committed two crimes: arbitrary detention by an authority and disobeying a court order. The group has also accused the Bureau of Prisons director of the crime of deprivation of liberty for his non-compliance with five release orders. The investigation into these complaints has been assigned to the Directorate for the Defense of Social Interests, a division of the Attorney General’s Office, an institution under the control of the Bukele government since May 2021, when legislative deputies loyal to the president illegally imposed the current attorney general, Rodolfo Delgado.
Neither the letters of release sent by several judges to the director of Izalco Prison, nor the SJH complaints, include the name of the public official responsible and, because the internal hierarchy of the Bureau of Prisons is shrouded in total secrecy, El Faro has not been able to identify the name of this individual.
Why would SJH turn to an institution that has been co-opted by the ruling regime? “We know we won’t find justice here. It’s like telling the prosecutor to investigate the person who appointed him. It’s impossible for him to do anything, and we know it. But we have to follow the process, because we’re getting closer to having the Inter-American Court of Human Rights hear our cases, and someday the International Criminal Court as well, but for that to happen, we have to exhaust all possible official avenues [in El Salvador],” Escobar explained.
On the morning of July 30, 2024, El Faro called Alejo Carbajal, director of communications for the Bureau of Prisons, to request an interview regarding the non-compliance of prison release orders. As has been the agency’s standard practice for years, he did not answer or return the call. El Faro also sent an interview request to the agency’s official e-mail account, but received an automated response in English: “Address not found.” In recent years, the communications policy of Bureau of Prisons Director Osiris Luna has been to maintain silence in response to allegations of irregularities on his watch, such as the secret negotiations between the Bukele government and the gangs, theft of food relief during the pandemic, and the hiring of phantom supervisors.
Ordered released, dead in prison
The National Civil Police tried to arrest Luis Armando Rodríguez on April 16, 2022. Police and soldiers came to his home in the Vilma neighborhood of Mejicapa canton, in Santa María, Usulután, an area once controlled by the Mara Salvatrucha-13. María, Rodríguez’s mother, came to the green metal gate at her front entrance and explained to the agents that her son was not a gang member, but a chronic alcoholic who had been suffering from kidney failure for two years. He had even been taking medication for the condition, she told them. The police seemed to heed the mother’s pleas: they took some photographs, but did not arrest her son.
Five days later, on April 21, 2022, police returned to Colonia Vilma and arrested Rodríguez for illicit association. “Now and then he would work for some bricklayers, but he was sick all the time, and was always drunk,” his mother said. “He would just lie around in the streets, the poor thing.” Rodríguez was transferred to Mariona Prison and later to Quezaltepeque. Every month, his family brought him a package of basic necessities and medicine for his kidney condition, but they don’t know if the prison guards ever gave the supplies to him.
María says her family hired a private lawyer and, after jumping through several bureaucratic hoops, managed to obtain a special hearing with an organized crime court in San Miguel, which granted her son conditional release. The family received the official letter on May 16, 2023, and the next day went to the Quezaltepeque Prison to arrange for Rodriguez’s release, but the guards told them that they would need a lawyer to complete the paperwork. The next day, they went to the prison with their lawyer, and the guards told them that they had to return the following day. When they tried a third time, the guards changed their argument: Rodríguez would not be allowed to leave the prison because he was detained under the state of exception.
The arbitrary decision of the Bureau of Prisons overruled the court order, defying the only constitutional entity in the country with the authority to decide who should be incarcerated and who should be freed. Rodríguez did not leave the prison.
One month and three days after the family received the letter of release, on June 19, 2023, the man who, per court order, was supposed to be at home with his family, was rushed from Quezaltepeque Prison to Rosales Hospital, where he died two days later. A doctor with the medical examiner’s office (Instituto de Medicina Legal), recorded the cause of death as “pulmonary edema (preliminary cause, pending report of additional studies).” Employees at the funeral home, however, told his mother that the corpse had arrived with severe bruising around the neck and other wounds on the back — injuries that were omitted from the official autopsy.
As of July 22, 2024, 309 people have died in prison under the state of exception: 305 adults and four babies, according to data from SJH. Though many of the bodies exhibited clear signs of torture, the medical examiner omitted this information in official reports, limiting the reported cause of death to “pulmonary edema” — the official cause widely cited in autopsies of in-custody deaths under the state of exception. The forensic information provided by the state in dozens of cases belies the obvious signs of violence that families have found on the bodies.
El Faro consulted with three sources regarding non-compliance with release orders. Salvadoran law mandates that before releasing anyone from custody, the Bureau of Prisons must verify that the individual in question is not the subject of a police or judicial investigation, but there is no set time limit for verifying this information. “It’s a problem caused by the state of exception,” explained a lawyer with the Central American University’s Human Rights Institute (IDHUCA). “There’s no way to control whether the Bureau of Prisons actually conducts those inquiries. Before the state of exception, the process would only take three to five days.”
A lawyer and a government employee with more than 20 years working for the Judicial Branch, who both spoke with El Faro on condition of anonymity, agreed that the system has become saturated by the thousands of detentions under the state of exception. She said that 15 days should be a sufficient time frame to verify whether a beneficiary of a release order has any cases pending. “It seems to me that they’re committing illegal and arbitrary acts by failing to obey court orders,” said the lawyer. For her part, the Judicial Branch employee explained that the Salvadoran Penal Code includes the crime of deprivation of liberty by a public official, employee, or authority. “The code states that the crime of deprivation of liberty is punishable by three to six years in prison, and removal from office,” she said.
Two months after Rodríguez’s death, on August 25, 2023, another detainee of the state of exception, who also had a release order, died in Quezaltepeque Prison: Juan de Jesús Orellana Luna, a 28-year-old bricklayer’s assistant.
Orellana suffered from hypokalemia (low potassium in the blood) and was arrested on May 30, 2023, while returning home from work in the Las Flores neighborhood of San Francisco Gotera, Morazán. The Attorney General’s Office accused him of illicit association and he was sent to Izalco Prison.
A week after Orellana’s arrest, on June 9, 2023, the Second Court Against Organized Crime C in San Miguel held a special hearing and granted him conditional release because of his delicate bill of health. “The release of the aforementioned defendant is hereby ordered, following verification that he is not wanted for another crime that might restrict his freedom.” The family received the letter of release three days after the hearing, on June 12, 2023. Orellana’s wife, Johana Hernández, told El Diario de Hoy that she went to Izalco Prison the next day, but that the Bureau of Prisons refused to release him. Between June and July 2023, Johana went to the prison three more times, but again, and without providing any justification, the Bureau of Prisons refused to release her husband, the father of her daughter.
On Aug. 11, 2023, Orellana was transferred from Izalco Prison to Jorge Mazzini Hospital in Sonsonate. He spent more than a week in a coma and died two weeks after his transfer, on August 25. The medical examiner’s report lists the cause of death as “pulmonary edema,” according to documents shared on social media by the Movement of Victims of the State of Exception (MOVIR) and a former FMLN legislator for Morazán, Jaime Guevara. The medical examiner’s report did not mention any evidence of violence, but according to a report published by the Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal on July 10, 2024, titled “Silence is Not an Option,” Orellana had suffered a thoracic hematoma.
A third person detained under the state of exception who had a letter granting their release died in Mariona Prison in April 2024. His name was Francisco, he was a 30-year-old businessman, and he was arrested in January 2023. El Faro is withholding his full name, as well as the details and documents related to his death, at the request of his family. Francisco’s uncle told El Faro that the family had documented his nephew’s innocence “point by point,” and had compiled a folder of information proving that he had no history of involvement with gangs, and that he did not have any gang-related tattoos. The uncle said that as a result of these efforts to prove Francisco’s innocence, the family was able to obtain a letter of release, but the authorities refused to comply with it. Francisco’s family did not share these documents because they fear government reprisals.
Orders ignored at the prison gates
On Sep. 27, 2022, the Specialized Instruction Court A-3 in San Salvador issued an order to the director of Izalco Prison: “The court requests that you immediately release the defendant [...] who is accused, along with others, of the crime of illicit association.”
The judicial order approved the release of seven people, among them Edenilson, a 22-year-old small business employee in Ciudad Delgado who was arrested under the state of exception on May 10, 2022. Edenilson’s family hired a lawyer, who in three months succeeded in derailing the prosecution’s case. Given the state’s lack of evidence on the charges of illicit association, the judge ordered his conditional release.
The day after the release order was issued, on Sep. 28, 2022, one of Edenilson’s family members, who spoke with El Faro on condition of anonymity, woke up at three in the morning to travel from Ciudad Delgado to Izalco Prison to request his release. But the guard at the prison entrance refused to process the paperwork because, according to Edenilson’s relative, he did not feel like doing it at that moment. “I was on my way back home, but a policeman outside the prison told me to go back and insist that they release him, that they had to process the paperwork. I went back and, this second time, they agreed to accept the release document,” he said.
But Edenilson was not released, as the judge had ordered, in September 2022. Instead, the Attorney General’s Office charged him with a “new” illicit association offense, while he was still in Izalco Prison. In other words, the Attorney General’s Office accused him first of belonging to a criminal group in Ciudad Delgado, then later, when the judge ordered his release due to lack of evidence, prosecutors accused him of the same crime in a different court in Santa Ana.
“He was charged in Santa Ana because that’s where the courts are that have jurisdiction over Izalco Prison,” said the source from the judiciary who spoke about the case and provided documents anonymously, for fear of losing her job. “They opened a new case on the charge of illicit association, but during the months when the crime was allegedly committed, the defendant was detained in Izalco. They decide where to send him. They can’t accuse him of illicit association again, while he was in prison, because his associations with other people are controlled by the Bureau of Prisons. He could easily be released on double jeopardy; nobody can be prosecuted twice for the same crime. It’s an arbitrary and crass way to go about keeping him in detention,” she said.
El Faro has been communicating with Edenilson’s relatives since the end of 2022. The source said that Edenilson’s family eventually ran out of money to pay the private lawyer who had obtained the first release order. Their only option left was to seek the help of the Solicitor General’s Office. Whether a public defender has taken any action in response to their petition remains a mystery to Edenilson’s family: they are not aware of any steps officials have taken, and the office has not answered any of their calls. Edenilson is still in prison.
In June 2022, three months into the state of exception, El Faro spent several weeks accompanying a public defender as he performed his duties, on the condition that the source would remain anonymous. These are some of the things he said:
“Not a single one. We haven’t been able to free one person.”
“Today I confirmed the frustration of many of my colleagues: that the role of the public defender has become practically decorative. I came ready with arraigos [documents to argue for bail] but the judge went to every length to discard everything.”
“In the end, we’ve become a justification or illusion that a person received a defense.”
Edenilson’s story is similar to that of Miguel, a man who sold wholesale tomatoes at the La Tiendona market in San Salvador and was arrested under the state of exception in April 2023. The difference between Edenilson’s case and Miguel’s is that in the latter, the family of the accused had the money to pay a team of lawyers who were able to petition the courts and navigate the legal bureaucracy, ultimately demonstrating that his rearrest for a “new” case of illicit association was unjust and illegal.
El Faro knows Miguel’s full name, address, and the key dates of his court case, but in accordance with an agreement made with a source who provided additional information on his case, details that could identify him have been omitted from this story. After spending six months in Izalco Prison, in October 2023, Miguel was granted a release order. The family delivered the document to the prison in October, but did not obtain his release. They returned in November and early December 2023, but the prison authorities once again refused to release him.
On Dec. 7, 2023, the guards told Miguel that he had been granted release and could go home. He walked toward the main gate of Izalco Prison, but before he reached the front gates, he was rearrested and charged, for a second time, with illicit association — the same crime for which he had just been granted release.
This “new” illicit association charge was adjudicated by a special organized crime court in Santa Ana. Miguel’s family —business owners with financial means— continued to pay a team of lawyers who filed a motion for a mistrial, arguing that the court lacked jurisdiction because the facts of the Santa Ana case were identical to those for which Miguel was facing prosecution in San Salvador. The judge agreed, declaring himself “incompetent” (unqualified to preside) and referring the case to the capital.
Miguel’s case was transferred to an organized crime court in San Salvador, which added the Santa Ana charge onto the first illicit association charge. The new court found no evidence that Miguel was a gang member or gang collaborator. For a second time, the court ordered his conditional release.
When Miguel’s family delivered the second release letter to Izalco Prison, the guards said they didn’t know anything about concepts like “incompetence,” “double jeopardy,” “consolidation of cases,” or “constitutional rights.” The prison authorities insisted that the San Salvador case was different from the Santa Ana case. “The prison authorities didn’t understand the legal concept of consolidation of cases, or that the two cases were connected,” the source said. “Finally, the court messenger got tired of coming to the prison and called the judge to explain the situation. Then the court sent a second letter, explaining the case to the prison authorities.” This second official communication was delivered to the prison in July 2024. Miguel was finally released after spending nine months illegally detained at the whim of the Bureau of Prisons.
The third case documented by El Faro of someone ordered released and rearrested under the state of exception is that of Mr. M., a 29-year-old manual laborer from a formerly gang-controlled community in the department of La Libertad. Mr. M. was arrested on Apr. 18, 2022. He provided testimony to El Faro on the condition that his name and place of residence be withheld from publication. According to his testimony, Mr. M. was at home when the National Civil Police launched an operation in his neighborhood and, without explanation, he was detained and charged with illicit association. He was sent to Mariona Prison and, after just 20 days, an organized crime court granted his conditional release.
Mr. M. was released from Mariona Prison on May 8, 2022. He recounts in his testimony how he held onto the release order like it was a precious treasure: he always carried it with him to prove to the police that he was not a gang member or collaborator.
On April 5, 2023, a public transport motorcycle driver was killed in the community where Mr. M. used to live. Although he was at home at the time of the murder, the police arrested the man as part of the raid on the neighborhood to capture the murder suspect. It has been 15 months since he was arrested and his family still does not know exactly what he is accused of. All they know is that they live in a community that used to be controlled by gangs, and that their family member had a criminal record for a crime for which he was released due to a lack of evidence.
The fear of those on the outside
Jesús was once an employee of Aeroman, a company that operates out of the Óscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport. He is a father with one daughter, and was arrested under the state of exception for having a prior criminal record: a conviction for smoking marijuana when he was a young student. In November 2023, an organized crime court granted him release, but for seven months, the Bureau of Prisons refused to comply with the order.
In May 2024, El Faro visited the home of Jesús’ mother—a rusty tin shack with a battered barbed wire fence, a swamp of soapy water in the front yard, and some ducks waddling around. The mother confirmed that her son had been granted a release order, but as of that month, was still being detained without cause. Jesús’ mother said that she would not disclose the details of his case because she was afraid of the state of exception. “I have other children and we don’t know what could happen,” she said.
The mother told El Faro that she would consult with her other children about whether or not to grant an interview. She never got back in touch. On July 30, 2024, El Faro called her to verify whether the Bureau of Prisons had complied with the release order, but she did not answer the call.
An innocent man imprisoned for two months
On the night of Sunday, Aug. 3, 2023, a group of soldiers landed on the island of Espíritu Santo, in Jiquilisco Bay, and arrested six people, taking them out of their homes one by one. Among the detained was Samuel, a 17-year-old waiter at the only restaurant on the island, and the only minor among the men detained that day. The whole community learned of the arrests before the night was over. But a little more than two months later, on October 25, the man in charge of the operation, Sergeant Ángel César Montesinos Flores, stated that the arrests had happened in a different way: they had taken place on the morning of Monday, August 4, and the subjects had been detained at a basketball court as they were preparing to deliver supplies to a group of alleged gang members hiding in the surrounding mangroves. Based on the sergeant’s testimony, a juvenile court in Usulután sentenced Samuel to ten years in prison.
Samuel’s family appealed the court’s decision, alleging that Sergeant Montesinos had provided false testimony. On December 13, the Eastern District Juvenile Court determined that the military had not provided any evidence to support the sergeant’s version of events and that the trial had been marred by other inconsistencies. The court declared Samuel innocent and ordered his “immediate” release. The next day, Samuel’s mother delivered the document to the Ilobasco prison farm where he was being held, but the guards told her that it was too late in the day. She presented the document to the guards the next day, and was again told no, without any explanation. She presented the order to the guards a third time, but again, they refused to release her son. December and January went by without any authority offering her family an explanation. Samuel was finally released on Feb. 12, 2023, after authorities with the Bureau of Prison had spent two months disobeying the court’s order.
The complaint against Osiris Luna
On July 22, 2024, SJH filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office denouncing the president of the Legislative Assembly, Ernesto Castro, along with the deputies of the Assembly’s Executive Board, for repeatedly voting to renew an indefinite state of exception operating in violation of basic human rights. Lawyers for the organization allege that all detentions must comply with established international standards — for example, Article 7 of the Rome Statute, to which El Salvador has been a signatory since Nov. 26, 2015. The Rome Statute, adopted in 1998, is the constituent instrument of the International Criminal Court (ICC). When a state signs the statute, a person from that country responsible for crimes against humanity can face prosecution at the ICC, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands.
SJH alleges that by refusing to comply with the basic requirements of the Rome Statute for the detention of persons, legislative deputies can face prosecution by the ICC because they voted for the 27 extensions to the state of exception and are thus “perpetrators” of crimes against humanity. The SJH’s complaint includes El Salvador’s Minister of Security, Gustavo Villatoro.
The complaint also accuses Vice Minister of Security and Bureau of Prisons Director Osiris Luna of another crime: deprivation of liberty, for his failure to comply with five court orders. The group has also denounced the director of Izalco Prison for the same crimes, accusing him of disobeying a judicial order and arbitrary detention by an authority. One of the cases denounced by SJH is among those described earlier in this story. On Aug. 1, 2024, El Faro visited the northern zone of San Salvador to verify the facts of another of the cases denounced by SJH.
The mother of Marco, a young man detained under the state of exception on June 22, 2023, said that her son had been released in March 2024. Marco was granted a release order in January 2024, but the Bureau of Prisons did not comply with the order until two months later, and only after his case was denounced at an SJH press conference. Although he was ultimately released, Marco’s case is included in the SJH’s complaint against Luna and the director of Izalco Prison.
Regarding the other three cases in which SJH accused prison authorities of violating the law in failing to comply with release orders, El Faro has been unable to contact the families of the victims to verify whether they are still in prison. SJH claims that they continue to be arbitrarily detained.
El Faro asked the victims’ rights organization MOVIR how many cases of non-compliance with release orders the organization has documented during the state of exception. On the afternoon of August 2, 2024, Alfredo Mejía, a member of MOVIR, responded: “We don’t have an exact number of how many people may have letters of release. I have in my possession five release orders [that the Bureau of Prisons has not complied with].” At the time of publication, El Faro was unable to verify whether any of MOVIR’s cases are the same as the cases in SJH’s complaint to the Attorney General’s Office.
On the morning of July 30, 2024, El Faro called the head of public relations for the judiciary, Yenifer Portillo, to request an interview with the judges presiding over the cases mentioned in this story, or an official statement on the matter from the Judicial Branch. Portillo requested that the inquiry be sent in writing, and provided an official email address. El Faro sent the request to the designated address, but received an automatic response in English: “Message blocked.” El Faro then sent a written request to Portillo via an instant messaging application, explaining the problem with the e-mail. At time of press, Portillo had not responded.
*Additional reporting from Carlos Barrera and Carlos Martínez. Translated by Max Granger
