The government of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, known for a harsh crackdown on street gangs and dissent, is holding dozens of political prisoners, a rights group charged Thursday.
Such detentions had not happened in El Salvador since its long civil war of the 1980s, making the country now as oppressive as Nicaragua and Venezuela, the NGO Cristosal said at a presentation in Guatemala City.
The group’s directors fled to Guatemala last July, saying they were being persecuted by Bukele’s administration.
Their report tallied 86 political prisoners, including the NGO’s chief anti-corruption investigator, Ruth Lopez.
Bukele has called himself the “world’s coolest dictator” and is close to US President Donald Trump.
He rules under a state of emergency during which crime has been slashed as authorities have arrested 91,000 people, often acting without warrants and accusing the detainees of gang affiliation.
Thousands of innocent people were swept up in the crackdown, and around 8,000 have been released.
“For the first time since the peace agreements, after the war, we can state that there are political prisoners in El Salvador,” Rene Valliente, head of research at Cristosal, told a news conference.
He was alluding to the 1992 accord that ended the war between a US-backed right-wing government and leftist guerrillas supported by Cuba.
The report said that besides the political prisoners at least 245 other people had been harassed in one way or another by the Salvadoran government, while cautioning the figure could be much higher.
Most are human rights advocates who criticized the gang crackdown, journalists, union leaders or environmental activists, the report said.
– ‘Old forms of state violence’ –
“Ultimately, the famous ‘Bukele model’ is a regime like so many others — a dictatorship that kills, tortures, robs and persecutes,” said Cristosal’s president Noah Bullock.
“What we see is a return to old forms of state violence exercised by tyrants and autocratic regimes to concentrate power and hold on to privileges,” he said.
Bukele, who has been president since 2019, secured last August the right to seek indefinite re-election after his party-controlled Congress approved a sweeping constitutional reform.
The Salvadoran government did not immediately respond to the report.
Cristosal said along with using criminal courts as “a means of repression,” the harassment included threats, having people followed, attempts at public shaming and “the systemic use of preventive incarceration.”
“These methods are similar to those seen in countries like Nicaragua and Venezuela,” the report said.
Lopez, the NGO’s anti-corruption investigator, was detained in May 2025 on charges of embezzling state funds when she worked for an electoral court a decade ago.
She has denied the charges and accused the government of trying to silence her.
Bukele, whose crackdown on street gangs has won over many Salvadorans, was re-elected in 2024 with a massive majority.
“I don’t care if they call me a dictator. I’d rather be called a dictator than see Salvadorans killed in the streets,” he said in a speech last year.
