El Salvador’s Bukele carries a life sentence in a nation that imprisons 1% of the population

San Salvador — SAN SALVADOR (AP) — El Salvador’s congress approved a constitutional amendment proposed by President Nayeb Bukele on Tuesday to allow life in prison in a country that has jailed more than 1% of its population in its war on gangs.

Bukele’s security cabinet presented the reform on the eve of El Salvador’s legislature, which is firmly in control of the populist leader’s party.

The measure was approved by 59 of the 60 lawmakers and will be approved next week.

Bukele has pushed through rounds of constitutional reforms that have been roundly criticized for chipping away at checks and balances and undermining the country’s fragile democracy.

“We’ll see who supports this reform and who dares to defend the idea that the Constitution should continue to keep murderers and rapists in prison,” Bukele wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.

In August, the government pushed through another reform that removed presidential term limits, paving the way for Bukele to stay in office indefinitely. Legal experts widely consider Bukele’s second term, which begins in 2024, to violate the constitution, which prohibits consecutive re-election.

The latest reform builds on other measures Bukele has taken to combat gangs in El Salvador, including a state of emergency that began in March 2022 after a wave of gang violence.

The measure is temporary but has stretched for nearly four years, suspending key constitutional rights and led to the detention of nearly 91,300 people.

Human rights groups have documented cases of arbitrary detention for years, with one group alleging before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that the majority of people imprisoned under the state of emergency were arbitrarily detained. Bukele strongly criticized the charges, but said he had freed 8,000 innocent people.

Emboldened by Bukele’s alliance with US President Donald Trump, the government has gone after its enemies, arresting critics and activists and increasingly forcing journalists and dissenting voices to choose between exile or prison.

Those arrested under immunity are held in prisons with little evidence, under vague charges by authorities, and with little access to due process. Prisoners are often tried in mass trials, and lawyers regularly lose track of where their clients are.

Bukele government officials have previously vowed that arrested gang members would “never return” to the streets.

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