Salvadoran courts have begun convicting hundreds of defendants simultaneously in mass trials characterized by weak evidence, closed proceedings, and severe restrictions on legal defenses, Human Rights Watch reported. The proceedings target individuals detained under El Salvador’s four-year state of emergency, a security measure launched by President Nayib Bukele’s administration in March 2022 to combat gang violence.

The mass hearings rely heavily on vaguely defined charges of “unlawful association” and use anonymous testimony from protected witnesses. Prosecutors say a person is a gang member because a police officer says so, one lawyer anonymously told HRW. The prosecutor relies on the police report, and the police report relies on unspecified official intelligence or public rumours. No one was acquitted, HRW said.

Mass Trials Limit Due Process and Defense Access

In a report released Wednesday, Human Rights Watch detailed findings from four indictments covering more than 600 defendants and a single judicial decision that sentenced over 120 people. Independent defense lawyers interviewed for the investigation stated that judicial proceedings move at a pace that makes due process nearly impossible. Attorneys reported being allotted as little as 10 to 15 minutes during hearings to represent dozens or even hundreds of defendants at once. Lawyers also described being routinely blocked from mounting an adequate defense, stating that judges denied them access to case files because the cases were under seal, and that they could not speak with their clients privately. Some lawyers additionally reported that prosecutors had threatened proposed defense witnesses with criminal prosecution, while judicial proceedings were conducted at such a fast pace that one lawyer described it as macabre, noting, They need the machine to run like clockwork.

The New York Times reported that inmates appear in court by video simultaneously for joint hearings, with some defense lawyers meeting their clients on the very same day as the trial. In the single mass trial reviewed by Human Rights Watch involving more than 120 people, every single defendant was convicted of unlawful association and handed prison terms of 30 or 45 years.

El Salvador's Mass Trials Deny Due Process, HRW Report Finds
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El Salvador’s mass trials are a mockery of justice, said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. These hearings are designed to produce guilty verdicts, not to weigh evidence under due process.

State of Emergency and Incarceration Crisis

The emergency decree, which has suspended certain due process rights and been repeatedly renewed, has resulted in the detention of more than 93,000 people, including over 3,000 children. El Salvador’s total prison population now stands at an estimated 120,000 inmates, representing roughly 2 percent of the nation’s population and giving the country one of the highest incarceration rates globally.

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More than 90 percent of people behind bars have been imprisoned for years awaiting trial.

President Bukele’s government has defended the security crackdown as an essential tool to dismantle gangs. While acknowledging that innocent people have been swept up in the mass arrests—noting in 2024 that some 8,000 people who had been arrested were later released, and pledging at the time, We are going to free 100 percent of the innocent people, arguing that no system was perfect—the administration maintains that the policy is necessary to protect public safety.

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Judges Lack Independence from Bukele Office

Human Rights Watch reported that prosecutors and judges have little, if any, independence from Mr. Bukele’s office. The cases have been presented before the Tribunals Against Organized Crime, a court system overseen by El Salvador’s Supreme Court, where the identities of the judges have not been disclosed, even to the lawyers involved in the proceedings.

In the course of preparing its investigation, Human Rights Watch requested official criminal proceeding records, conviction totals, and pretrial detention numbers from the Salvadoran Supreme Court and the Attorney General’s Office.