Mega-prison in El Salvador with 40,000 suspected gangsters crammed in
Two thousand hardened criminals just moved into their new home - a mega-prison in El Salvador - from which they will never leave.
The gangsters were shackled, stripped and forced to sit in enormous lines as a message blared out telling them to get comfortable because they won't ever leave.
In the prison, which has been named the "centre for terrorists", convicts don't even get a mattress to lay on and 20 per cent won't get a bed at all.
The first 2,000 inmates are just the tip of the iceberg. The high-tech jail in gang-infested Tecoluca can house a whopping 40,000 prisoners.
President Nayib Bukele, who has promised to take a tough stance on crime, is trying to make his prison system as grim as possible in the hopes that it'll stop citizens turning to crime.
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Balaclava-clad guards order their new inmates into the prison they'll never leave again (Salvadorean Presidency/AFP via G)He warned those in custody they will "never walk out of here".
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."
El Salvador has struggled with a vicious gang problem for decades (Salvadorean Presidency/AFP via G)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.
The inmates can only leave if they're being punished in an isolation cell or for legal hearings (Salvadorean Presidency/AFP via G)
The prison is the largest in the Americas, and is called the "Terrorist Confinement Centre" (Salvadorean Presidency/AFP via G)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."
Rights groups say the scheme is a violation of human rights and prison standards.
There are recreational areas in the jail, but exclusively for the guards to use (Salvadorean Presidency/AFP via G)The prison is fully equipped with dining halls, exercise areas, and even table tennis tables. But they're for the guards, not the cons.
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The only time inmates get out of their cramped cells is for legal hearings, or if they're taken to an isolation cell for punishment.
As part of his campaign, Bukele has rounded 63,000 gangsters, some of whom were pinched without warrants.
The prison was built as part of the new president's tough stance on crime (Salvadorean Presidency/AFP via G)The prison is made up of eight buildings constructed with reinforced concrete.
Each building has 32 cells of 100 square metres, with each one set to hold 100 prisoners.
The cells have just two sinks and two toilets for all of the 100 inmates to use.
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