San Salvador, El Salvador

El Salvador plans to hold around 600 mass trials for the tens of thousands suspected gang members who have been detained without charges in the country since 2022, the Central American country's attorney general said Thursday.

Over 80,000 Salvadorans have been detained -- some of whom human rights defenders maintain are innocent -- since gang-busting President Nayib Bukele declared a state of emergency three years ago that allowed arrests without warrants.

The government accuses the detainees all of being gang members, but with scant evidence or due process, no one knows for sure.

"Approximately 300 prosecutors will be responsible for presenting evidence before appropriate courts in the approximately 600 trials that need to be initiated," Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado told a congressional security committee.

Delgado also suggested changes to the country's law against organized crime that could see the detainees remain in jail without charge for up to three more years.

The committee gave a favorable opinion on Delgado's suggested changes, which included giving him two more years -- with the possibility of a third -- to file charges.

"A considerable amount of time will have to pass for a judge to make a decision," Delgado said.

He did not provide details about when the trials could start -- or the crimes the detainees could be charged with.

The changes to the law are expected to be approved by Congress, which is dominated by Bukele's party, on Friday.

That would be just days before a two-year deadline runs out for the attorney general to file charges.

Bukele's hardline approach to El Salvador's powerful gangs has made him one of the world's most domestically popular leaders, even as human rights defenders sound the alarm over arbitrary arrests and growing authoritarianism.

He recently made headlines by taking in migrants from the mass deportation drive of his ally US President Donald Trump and putting them in a maximum-security prison, where some have reported mistreatment.

A report released by the US State Department this week declined to criticize El Salvador, saying there were "no credible reports of significant human rights abuses" in the country and instead noting a "historic low" in crime.

Lawyer and human rights activist Ingrid Escobar warned that thousands of innocent people have been thrown in jail.

"The innocent will pay for the guilty," she said, adding: "Even dead people will be convicted."

ob/fj/dl/ksb

© Agence France-Presse