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The president of El Salvador has today threatened to “sentence” some 16,000 gang members imprisoned as a wave of violent killings engulfs the Central American country.
Nayib Bukele issued the infamous ultimatum to gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18, after a black weekend where police reported 87 homicides across the country.
The horrific violence forced authorities to declare a state of emergency on Sunday, giving increased power to police as controls and bans on checkpoints set up across the country.
“Stop the killings or they (the prisoners) will pay for you too,” Bukele wrote on social media, accompanied by a video of raids on prison cells, in which almost naked gang members were lined up in yards where they were checked and were forced to run under the threat of rubber truncheons.
The images showed masked officers pulling handcuffed prisoners in trousers lined up in narrow rows.
Others were seen sitting on their knees watched by armed police as others checked their cells.
There are about 70,000 gang members MS-13, Barrio 18 and others in El Salvador prisons convicted of crimes such as murder, extortion or drug trafficking.
Many of them are distinguished by badge tattoos like Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13 band) or Barrio 18 as seen in the denigrating photos from the Quezaltepeque Penal Center prison in El Salvador.
Members of the gangs Barrao 18 Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) during the checks at the Quezaltepeque Penal Center prison, yesterday on March 28, 2022.
The public display of submission comes after a wave of weekend violence and threats from the president.
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