Did El Salvador's government make a deal with gangs?

2020-10-03 16:30:29

El Salvador's jailed gang members will see "not one ray of sunshine", said the country's prisons director, Orisis Luna Meza, in April. He was describing the latest phase in the government's hard-line security policy, the "Plan for Territorial Control", which imposed stricter, more inhumane conditions in the country's maximum-security prisons. Natural light would be shut out from the inmates' cells, family visits were banned and prisoners from two rival gangs - the MS-13 and Barrio 18 - would be housed together, mortal enemies living cheek-by-jowl in the heavily overcrowded cells. Images of hundreds of half-naked, shaven-headed prisoners shackled together in the prison yards amid a worsening coronavirus outbreak sparked outrage among international human rights groups.