In El Salvador’s mass trials, lawyers struggle to defend hundreds

Human Rights Watch says defendants face proceedings where lawyers have struggled to access case files. Save Share Human Rights Watch (HRW) has released a report documenting widespread violations as part of El Salvador’s mass trials, in which hundreds of people can be tried and convicted together. The report, released on Wednesday, reviews four indictments covering more than 600 defendants and a single court ruling that involved more than 120 people. It also includes interviews with 15 defence lawyers, who say their clients were denied their due process rights and were therefore unable to adequately defend themselves at trial. The report concludes that defendants in the mass trials face vaguely defined charges, weak evidence and faulty proceedings. In some cases, defence lawyers have reportedly been restricted from viewing their clients’ case files and communicating privately with the defendants. “El Salvador’s mass trials are a mockery of justice,” said Juanita Goebertus, the Americas director at HRW, in a statement. “These hearings are designed to produce guilty verdicts, not to weigh evidence under due process.” The mass trials are part of President Nayib Bukele’s sweeping security crackdown, launched in response to a surge in organised crime in the country. Bukele first issued a state of emergency to address the crime wave in March 2022, suspending certain civil liberties in favour of greater powers for law enforcement officials. Those efforts included mass arrests. The following year, El Salvador’s Congress passed a bill clearing the way for mass trials as well, allowing courts to decide cases involving hundreds of individual defendants. The Salvadoran government has defended the trials as necessary to dismantle gangs, given the scale of crime in the country. But critics have repeatedly warned that such tactics violate basic human rights and have led to unlawful imprisonment. Bukele himself has acknowledged that innocent people have been swept up in his crackdown. In 2024, he said some 8,000 people who had been arrested were later released. “We are going to free 100 percent of the innocent people,” he pledged at the time, arguing that no system was perfect. More than 93,000 people, including more than 3,000 children, have been detained under El Salvador’s emergency order, which has been renewed multiple times since 2022. An estimated 120,000 people are currently imprisoned in El Salvador, equivalent to about 2 percent of the country’s population....