Hundreds of MS-13 gang members in El Salvador mass trial accused of more than 47,000 crimes

Hundreds of MS-13 gang members accused of homicides, drug and arms trafficking, and disappearances are the subject of a mass trial in El Salvador.

Images from the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, prison in Tecoluca show rows of gang members in the court hearing.

The group is accused of more than 47,000 crimes committed between 2012 and 2022, according to a statement from the El Salvador Attorney General's Office.

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A post from the attorney general's office on X says charges against the group also include extortion and that the defendants include those alleged to have been involved in a wave of gang violence in March 2022.

The violence led Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to declare a state of emergency, which is still in place.

In total, the attorney general's office said that 413 MS-13 members are already in prison, and that another 73 have active arrest warrants.

The international criminal gang was originally formed on the street corners of Los Angeles and only spread when members were deported from the US back to Central America.

US President Donald Trump designated MS-13 as a terrorist organisation last year, and his administration has made deportation agreements with El Salvador to exchange prisoners affiliated with the gang and others.

The agreement, part of the US's crackdown on illegal immigration, made headlines with the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who was mistakenly deported, detained in CECOT and then returned to the US.

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United Nations experts have criticised El Salvador's use of mass trials, introduced in 2023, saying that they "undermine the exercise of the right to defence and the presumption of innocence of detainees".

Elsewhere, Human Rights Watch said in its annual report that El Salvador's mass imprisonment policy had raised the prison population to an estimated 118,000 detainees.

It said this is more than double capacity, "significantly worsening already poor prison conditions", and added that "many detainees have no apparent connections to gang-related violence".

(c) Sky News 2026: Hundreds of MS-13 gang members in El Salvador mass trial accused of more than 47,000 crimes