El Salvador wraps up mass MS-13 trial amid due process concerns

El Salvador wrapped up a three-month mass trial of 486 alleged MS-13 members on July 15 in Tecoluca. Prosecutors accuse the defendants of belonging to a criminal network blamed for more than 47,000 crimes, including homicide, extortion, drug trafficking and arms trafficking, between 2012 and 2022.

The defendants have appeared virtually from high-security prisons, including the CECOT mega-prison, in extraordinary court proceedings designed to match the scale of the gang structure prosecutors describe. The administration has jailed tens of thousands of suspected gang members under a state of emergency that has reshaped daily life in El Salvador and driven down visible street violence, while drawing criticism from rights groups for capturing people with little or no gang connection.

The central due process fight around Bukele’s security model is whether a court can fairly separate individual responsibility from alleged membership in a criminal organization when hundreds of defendants are tried together. United Nations experts called mass trials a threat to the exercise of the right to defence and the presumption of innocence of detainees. Defense lawyers in the case say the format makes it difficult to examine evidence against each defendant individually and risks replacing individualized justice with collective guilt.

Bukele’s government says the prosecution is aimed at organized crime on its own terms, not just at individual street-level offenses. Prosecutors say the defendants were part of a larger criminal enterprise and that only a consolidated proceeding can account for the reach of MS-13, a gang long blamed for murders, extortion, disappearances and violent territorial control across El Salvador and parts of Central America.