By: Staff Writer
July 17, 2026
Amnesty International in a recently released report on human rights abuses in El Salvador said the country’s mass arbitrary detentions, the suspension of guarantees, and serious human rights violations amount to crimes against humanity.
The report, “El Salvador: “Security” without rights: Impact of mass arbitrary arrests and denial of due process on the potential commission of crimes against humanity in El Salvador,” said that four years after the introduction of the state of exception, more than 90,000 people have been detained, at least 470 have died in state custody and thousands of families continue to seek answers about the whereabouts, health or legal status of their loved ones. The report documents how exceptionality was progressively transformed into a permanent security policy based on the prolonged suspension of rights and the systematic weakening of the rule of law.
The report also said: “The state of exception declared by the government of President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador on 27 March 2022 constitutes one of the most profound and worrying processes of transformation of the country’s criminal justice system in recent decades.
“Although it was presented by the authorities as an extraordinary response to an increase in gang violence, the state of exception has evolved into a model of public security that has normalized the suspension of constitutional safeguards and the adoption of measures incompatible with international human rights standards, creating conditions for the commission of serious human rights violations and possibly crimes under international law on a large scale.
“At the time of publication of this report, in July 2026, the state of exception was still in effect after having been extended repeatedly since it was first declared in March 2022.”
The research is based on six fact-finding visits conducted between May 2022 and January 2025, 109 interviews with victims, their relatives, lawyers, public defenders, private defence attorneys, and active and retired members of the National Civil Police (PNC), as well as an analysis of charging documents, court rulings, legislative decrees and a direct review of more than 80 individual cases.
The report reveals how active and retired PNC officers described a system of detention quotas, verbal instructions without documentary support and institutional pressure to fabricate records that would lend an appearance of legality to arbitrary arrests. It also records the use of outdated databases and profiling based on territorial and socio-economic criteria by the Salvadoran authorities to justify mass arbitrary detentions.
“In many cases, no one verifies whether the detentions are lawful or not. We just bring people in, the Attorney General’s Office receives the package, and that’s it. No judge sees anything at that moment […]. By the time they are taken to court, fifteen days have gone by, and the judges simply read the list and confirm everything. No one asks whether there were beatings or whether there was an arrest warrant,” said a PNC officer interviewed by Amnesty International.