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Deported migrants say they were beaten, sexually abused and fed rotten food inside a notorious El Salvador prison.
Venezuela has launched an investigation into the role El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and his senior officials played in the alleged torture of 252 migrants who were detained in the Central American country after being deported from the United States.
Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab made the announcement in Caracas on Monday, as he presented photos and testimonies of some of the men, who said they were beaten, sexually abused and fed rotten food while inside a notorious El Salvador prison.
Others were denied medical care or treated without anaesthesia, Saab said, urging the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN Human Rights Council to act.
The Venezuelans were sent to El Salvador from the US in March, after US President Donald Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang without due process.
The deportations drew fierce criticism from human rights groups and a legal battle with the Trump administration. Family members and lawyers of many of the men deny they had gang ties.
Prisoner swap
The former detainees arrived near Caracas on Friday following their release in El Salvador, in exchange for 10 US citizens and political prisoners held in Venezuela.
Saab said the prosecutor’s office was interviewing the returned migrants. Some of the former detainees have since reunited with their families, but they have not yet returned to their own homes.
Several had bruises on their bodies, marks of being shot with rubber bullets, and one had a split lip.
Andry Hernandez Romero, a 32-year-old beautician among those sent to El Salvador, said he barely survived the ordeal.
“We were going through torture, physical aggressions, psychological aggressions,” he said in a video presented by Saab. “I was sexually abused.”
Others spoke of being held in “inhuman cells”, deprived of sunlight and ventilation, and given rotten food and unsafe drinking water while in the El Salvador prison.
The men had no access to lawyers or their relatives, and the last time many of them were seen was when Bukele’s government issued photos of them arriving at the prison shackled and with their heads shorn.
Apart from Bukele, Venezuela will investigate El Salvador’s Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro and Head of Prisons Osiris Luna Meza, Saab said.
Bukele’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the media. Late on Monday, Bukele posted about the return on social media but did not comment on the abuse allegations.
“The Maduro regime was satisfied with the swap deal; that’s why they accepted it,” he said on X. “Now they scream their outrage, not because they disagree with the deal but because they just realised they ran out of hostages from the most powerful country in the world.”
President Nicolas Maduro, on his TV show on Monday, claimed Bukele had tried “last minute” to prevent the migrants from leaving.
“You could not stop the first plane, but for the second plane he put some car on the runway … to provoke either an accident or prevent them from leaving,” he said.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado labelled the process as an “exchange of prisoners of war” during a television interview on Monday.
Venezuela itself faces an investigation by the ICC in The Hague, with similar allegations of torturing prisoners and denying them access to legal representation of political prisoners.
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