Inside El Salvador's hellish supermax prison of torture

Migrant detainees deported by Trump tell of traumatic abuse

- JAMES C. REYNOLDS

"They kept hitting me in the stomach, and when I tried to breathe, I started to choke on the blood. My cellmates shouted for help, saying they were killing us, but the officers said they just wanted to make us suffer."

The harrowing testimony of Daniel B* is among dozens collected by human rights groups since the 252 Venezuelan migrants were repatriated from one of El Salvador's most notorious prisons in July this year.

Five months earlier, they had been deported there from the US as part of Donald Trump's much-publicised migration crackdown.

El Salvador's maximum security Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) has become emblematic of strongman president Nayib Bukele's brutal crackdown on organised crime in recent years. Mr Bukele boasts of the project, sharing curated images of guards hauling shaven prisoners through the compound as evidence of his triumph over the gangs.

But President Bukele's prison goes beyond taking El Salvador's most dangerous off the streets, monitoring groups warn. CECOT has been branded a “black hole of human rights” amid reports of overcrowding, arbitrary beatings and the denial of any contact with the outside world.

Prisoners are sent to CECOT with the expectation that they will never leave.

A rare insight into this bleak reality came when Human Rights Watch (HRW) spoke to many of those released back to Venezuela.

Its report, published this week, claimed that while inside the prison, detainees were subjected to sexual violence; beaten for requesting medical treatment; held in incommunicado detention; and given water for bathing and drinking containing vermin and worms.