15 February 2024 , 14:52
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The world has been given a rare glimpse inside the notorious mega jail in El Salvador where some of the country's worst murderers and "psychopaths" have been locked away for the rest of their natural lives.
The Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism (Cecot) is a maximum security jail constructed to house 40,000 convicts far away from the general public in a remote part of the South American country.
While it is celebrated by politicians and widely supported in El Salvador, human rights groups and critics of the hardline President Nayib Bukele say CECOT is a "black hole of human rights" where prisoner rights are largely ignored. United Nations officials have described it as a "concrete and steel pit", which has been built to dispatch of the prisoners without applying the death penalty.
The director of the prison told the BBC: "Here are the psychopaths, the terrorists, the murderers who had our country in mourning. During a choreographed media visit, reporters saw how the artificial lighting remained on throughout the night. Another similarly torturous condition of the mega jail is the stifling heat. The temperature in the cells can reach 35C during the day, with few sources of ventilation. Rifle-wielding prison guards stand in watchtowers looking down on the general population keeping a watchful eye for violence breaking out.
Inmates inside their cell at CECOT in Tecoluca, El Salvador (Getty Images)The convicts are forced to sleep in close quarters, each taking a bed on a four-storey bunk. However, they aren't even given the comfort of a mattress or a sheet and have to bed down on bare metal. At meal time, they have to eat food - usually rice, brans, hard-boiled eggs or pasta - with their hands as they can't even be trusted with plastic or wooden utensils. Apart from the walls, two sinks and two toilets - which they have to use in full view of their fellow inmates - their cells are completely bare.
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The prison authorities say as many as 40,000 criminals can be housed there (Getty Images)They get a brief 30-minute window in which they're allowed to exercise, using only their own bodyweight due to fears of them bludgeoning each other or the guards with dumbbells or barbells. Surrounding the compound are two electrified fences and two reinforced concrete walls. Nineteen towers secure the perimeter.
After the prison was opened in February last year, President Nayib Bukele - who promised citizens to take a tough stance on crime - said he was trying to make his prison system as grim as possible in the hopes that it'll stop people turning to crime. He also warned those in custody they will "never walk out of here".
Above the general population are rifle-wielding prison guards in their watchtowers (AFP via Getty Images)Tweeting about the town-sized prison, he wrote: "At dawn, in a single operation, we transferred the first 2000 members to the Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT). This will be their new house, where they will live for decades, all mixed, unable to do any further harm to the population."
In a video, Bukele showed balaclava-clad guards shackling the hands and feet of a group of tattooed men with dead-eye stares before tossing them on a bus that would take them to their new home. The convicts, wearing nothing other than a pair of white boxers, are seen bending over at the orders of their keepers. The men, stacked closely together, are forced to sit with their legs on either side of the person in front of them.
Security minister Gustavo Villatoto said: "We are eliminating this cancer from society. Know that you will never walk out of CECOT, you will pay for what you are... cowardly terrorists."