Nearly 500 alleged MS-13 members are on a mass trial in El Salvador

SAN SALVADOR (AP) — Prosecutors in El Salvador opened a massive, joint trial of nearly 500 alleged members of the MS-13 gang on charges that include homicide, extortion and arms trafficking.

The trial, which opened Monday in San Salvador, is the latest in a practice that has been criticized by human rights groups as an infringement on the right of the accused to defend themselves. Such trials form part of President Nayib Bukele’s iron-fist approach against criminal groups in El Salvador, which has been under a state of emergency for four years to fight organized crime.

“These mass trials lack basic guarantees of due process and thus they increase the risk of convicting innocent people who have nothing to do with the gangs that have terrorized the country for decades,” Juan Pappier, Americas deputy director for Human Rights Watch, told The Associated Press.

The 486 defendants are accused of being members of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, and accused of ordering more than 47,000 crimes from 2012 to 2022, according to the Salvadoran government. The charges also include femicide and enforced disappearances.

“For years, this structure has operated systematically, causing fear and mourning among Salvadoran families,” Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado said on social media.

El Salvador once had one of the highest homicide rates in the world, with 103 killings per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015. Since Bukele took office in 2019, government statistics show a drastic drop in that number. But human rights groups say Bukele’s approach has violated due process.

Mass trials “raise serious questions about compliance with due process guarantees, including the right to an individualized defense, the presumption of innocence and access to adequate legal representation,” Irene Cuéllar, researcher for Central America at Amnesty International, said Tuesday in a statement.

The gang leaders are being tried in an open hearing at an Organized Crime Court under a 2023 reform of El Salvador’s penal code.

The country’s “state of exception” since March 2022 has suspended fundamental rights, including the right to be informed of the reasons for detention and the right to legal counsel. Security forces can also intercept telecommunications without a court order, and detention without a preliminary hearing is extended from 72 hours to 15 days.

In a statement Tuesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said it “maintains serious worries about the impact on human rights by the unjustified and excessive prolongation of the state of exception in El Salvador” and called on the government to end the measure.

Of the defendants, 413 are being held at the Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison that Bukele ordered built that has become a symbol of his controversial security policies. Many defendants watched the proceedings virtually from the prison.

Another 73 alleged gang members are being prosecuted in absentia, according to the Attorney General’s office.

In March 2025, in the first such collective trial, 52 members of the Barrio 18 gang were sentenced to prison, with the longest sentence amounting to 245 years.

In another collective trial in November 2025, a court found 45 members of a rival faction, Barrio 18 Sureños, guilty of several crimes and handed down a 397-year prison sentence to one leader.

Since the state of emergency began, authorities say they have arrested 91,300 people allegedly belonging or tied to gangs.

Human rights organizations say thousands have been arbitrarily detained and that they have registered more than 6,000 complaints filed by victims under the state of emergency. At least 500 people have died in state custody.

Bukele has acknowledged that at least 8,000 innocent people were arrested under the measure and have since been released.

“Justice is not only about punishing those responsible,” said Cuéllar of Amnesty International. “It is also about protecting innocent people from being wrongly accused or convicted.”

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Associated Press reporter Anna-Catherine Brigida reported from Mexico City.