SAN SALVADOR, April 21 (Reuters) – A Salvadoran court on Tuesday began the mass trial of over 400 alleged leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha criminal gang, commonly known as MS-13, in a case involving more than 47,000 crimes prosecutors say were committed between 2012 and 2022.
Prosecutors said the 486 defendants ordered homicides, feminicides, extortion, arms trafficking and forced disappearances, and also charged them with rebellion for allegedly seeking to establish a parallel state through territorial control.
The Salvadoran Prosecutor’s Office, which has presented autopsies, ballistic analyses, and witness testimony as evidence, requested the judge to impose the maximum prison sentence for each crime, meaning that a single defendant could face a sentence of up to 245 years in prison if found guilty of all charges.
Authorities said the case included orders given to kill 86 people between March 25 and 27, 2022, considered the most violent weekend in post-war El Salvador.
The wave of killings prompted the largely pro-government Congress to declare a controversial nationwide state of emergency. The measure has since been extended indefinitely every month to date.
The state of emergency has been heavily criticized for allegedly enabling rampant human rights abuses, and Salvadoran authorities have been accused by international jurists of committing crimes against humanity including torture, murder, and forced disappearances under the decree.
The state of emergency has allowed security forces to detain more than 91,500 people.
Humanitarian organizations estimate that the measure has caused prison overcrowding of 238%, along with the deaths of 513 detainees in state custody.
The government of President Nayib Bukele says the measure has allowed for a reduction in homicides to 1.3 per 100,000 people registered in 2025, down from 7.8 in 2022, according to official figures.
The defendants are being held across five prisons, with most defendants detained at CECOT, a notorious maximum-security prison opened by the Bukele administration in 2023 that has come to embody El Salvador’s zero-tolerance crackdown on gang violence.
Human rights groups have described conditions there as inhumane, with allegations of torture, round-the-clock surveillance, and no outside contact permitted – including access to legal counsel.
Among those on trial in a virtual hearing are long-standing MS-13 gang leaders such as Borromeo Henriquez and Dionisio Umanzor, who participated in the 2012-2014 truce between the government and the gangs during the presidency of Mauricio Funes.
(Reporting by Gerardo Arbaiza, Editing by Alistair Bell)
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