'Cemetery of living dead' Venezuelans recall time in notorious jail

Arturo Suárez struggles to pinpoint the worst moment of his incarceration inside a prison the warden boasted was "a cemetery of the living dead".

- Tom Phillips and Clavel Rangel

Was it the day inmates became so exasperated at being beaten by guards that they threatened to hang themselves with their sheets? "The only weapon we had was our own lives," recalled the Venezuelan former detainee.

Or was it when Suárez turned 34 while stranded in a Central American penitentiary prison officers had claimed he would only leave in a body bag?

Suárez, a reggaeton musician known by the stage name SuárezVzla, was one of 252 Venezuelans who found themselves trapped inside El Salvador's notorious "Cecot" terrorism confinement centre after becoming swept up by Donald Trump's anti-immigrant crusade.

After 125 days behind bars, Suárez and the other detainees were freed on 18 July after a prisoner swap deal between Washington and Caracas. Since flying home to Venezuela, they have started to open up about their torment, offering a rare and disturbing glimpse of the human toll of President Nayib Bukele's authoritarian crackdown in El Salvador and Trump's campaign against immigration.

Another detainee, Neiyerver Rengel, 27, described his panic after guards claimed he would probably spend 90 years there.