El Salvador begins mass trial of 486 alleged MS-13 gang members

El Salvador has launched a collective trial of 486 alleged gang members belonging to the notorious MS-13 or Mara Salvatrucha.

The trial in a Salvadoran court, the biggest one, comes as President Nayib Bukele continues to deploy his controversial emergency powers to crackdown on gang violence.

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According to prosecutors, the MS-13 gang members are charged with more than 47,000 crimes committed between 2012 and 2022, including a weekend that was El Salvador’s bloodiest since the civil war. The crimes included femicide, homicide, arms trafficking, and extortion.

In March 2022, the state imposed a massive state of emergency that reshaped the country’s legal and social landscape. Under this paradigm shift, the security forces arrested more than 91,500 people. Later, Congress passed a decree allowing for the mass trails of these detainees.

However, the mass trial has raised the concerns among human rights groups, arguing the collective prosecutions not only thwart defendants from accessing legal counsels but also violate the right to due process.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called for abolishing the use of sweeping emergency powers as a coercive tool to fight crime.

“This regime suspends the rights to a legal defense and to the inviolability of communications, and also extends administrative detention timelines,” the commission issued a statement.

However, Bukele’s government claimed that after the gang crackdown, the homicide rate came down to 1.3 per 100,000 people in 2025 compared to 7.8 in 2022.

During the trial, the prosecutors presented various pieces of evidence, including ballistic analyses, autopsies reports and witness testimonies, thereby asking the judge to grant the maximum prison sentence for each crime.

Given the severity and frequency of crimes, the defendants could receive up to 245 years in prison if found guilty of multiple charges.