Notorious El Salvador mega prison receives thousands more rounded-up gang members to be held WITHOUT trial - as the bare metal four-storey shelves they must sleep on in their hellish cells are revealed

Daily Mail UK ^ | March 15, 2023 | Natasha Anderson

[Morgana]

A mega-prison in El Salvador brought in a second wave of suspected gang members who will now serve out their sentences in the notorious facility that has been criticised over its 'severe conditions.'

The second group of 2,000 inmates were moved today amid tight security to the new Izalco prison, the largest mega-prison in the Americas, which was built to accommodate more than 40,000 gangsters.

Footage shows the heavily tattooed and barefoot men, dressed only in white shorts, being hurriedly moved around with their heads bowed and hands cuffed behind their backs.

The latest look inside the facility revealed that inmates are expected to sleep on bare four-storey sheet metal bunks without mattresses.

'In a new operation we transferred the second group of 2,000 gangsters to the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism,' President Nayib Bukele said on Twitter today.

Footage showed how the prisoners were loaded onto buses, hands and feet in shackles, to be taken to the new prison in a convoy that included helicopters.

They were stacked closely together, each sitting with his legs on either side of the man in front of them as armed guards in balaclavas look on.

The men were similarly stacked up before being led in large groups into their cells, where they are left sitting on the floor before stacked metal beds.

Each cell has only two sinks and two toilets, with 80 metal bunks for every 100 prisoners and no mattresses.

'There will be no mattresses in the cells,' the prison warden - who wore a ski mask to protect his identity - previously told journalists when the project was unveiled.

Former British prisoner Raphael Rowe, who presents The World's Toughest Prisons on Netflix, said the images shocked him when they began to emerge last month.

[DouglasKC]

That’s how all prisons should be actually. Make the prisoners realize that there are forces greater than they are and that they have to have accountability. At the same time it’s teaching them discipline...something probably none of them have learned ever.