More than 500 prisoners have died in Bukele's prisons since 2022

Walter Vladimir Sandoval, 25, was captured on March 30, 2022, just five days after the state of emergency declared by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Four days later, on April 3, he was already dead: his body showed fractures and visible injuries to his face, knees and chest. He was the first detainee to die in custody under the state of emergency, according to police documents and a report by the organization Socorro Jurídico Humanitario (Humanitarian Legal Aid, or SJH). To date, at least 517 deaths have been documented.

A report by the National Civil Police (PNC), obtained through a massive email leak known as Guacamaya Leaks and in the possession of EL PAÍS, reveals that authorities attempted to conceal the true cause of Sandoval’s death. He was arrested a few steps from his home while having a few beers with friends. Police officers beat him and took him away, accusing him of being a member of Barrio 18, one of the criminal gangs that terrorized the Central American country for decades. His family, however, maintains that he was a quiet young man with a passion for soccer. The officers responsible for his transfer claimed that he “fell down some stairs inside the Izalco Penitentiary,” but the leaked police report states that the autopsy results show that “the injuries found on the victim were deliberately inflicted, thus determining that the case is now a homicide.”

Since the state of emergency began just over four years ago, the Bukele administration, which took office in 2019, has been determined to deny or conceal the deaths in its prisons. The president himself claimed, when bodies began to pile up, that they were “natural deaths.” His director general of prisons, Osiris Luna, also defended this position, arguing that “more people died in prisons before this” yet “nobody said anything.”

When the death toll reached 90 in November 2022, the minister of security and justice, Gustavo Villatoro, publicly acknowledged the figure but described it as “normal,” adding that “some institutions” were investigating the events. Eight months later, the attorney general, Rodolfo Delgado, ordered 142 cases closed, arguing that the deaths did not constitute “any crime,” though he offered no evidence. Sandoval’s case was among them.

Deaths in custody

The organization SJH has documented 517 cases of deaths in custody in El Salvador. It has also compiled hundreds of testimonies and documents from family members. The archive reveals a sustained pattern of abuse and state negligence. It records names, ages, dates of death, and prisons. In addition, the organization documents whether the victims were identified as gang members, whether they were being prosecuted or convicted, the cause of death, and whether they showed signs of torture.

This newspaper has been able to corroborate 30 of the 517 cases. Sixteen have been documented through direct testimonies and 24 through leaked reports from the National Civil Police (PNC) in which the institution acknowledges the deaths that occurred between March 26 and May 18, 2022. In this document, the PNC classifies four cases as “homicides” and the other 20 as “to be investigated further.”

Data from SJH reveals that 30% of those detained died from violent causes or torture; another 32% from medical negligence; and the remainder from unspecified causes. Furthermore, 92% died without having been convicted, and 94% were not even identified as gang members. At the end of March, this newspaper revealed that more than 33,000 of the 92,000 detainees were not identified as gang members or collaborators before the measure was implemented.

The SJH database also reveals a pattern of cover-up: 50 victims with signs of torture were diagnosed with “pulmonary edema” by forensic doctors, a figure that experts consulted by this newspaper consider abnormally high. Pulmonary edema is the abnormal accumulation of fluid in the alveoli, which specialists attribute to severe infections, asphyxiation, trauma, or kidney failure, but, according to experts, it is frequently used to mask other causes of death. Organizations such as Cristosal and Human Rights Watch have even documented bodies buried in clandestine cemeteries without their families being informed.

This newspaper requested information from the Ministries of Health and Justice, the Attorney General’s Office, the Institute of Legal Medicine, and the Directorate of Prisons. At the time of publication, none of these institutions had responded. Under the Bukele administration, data that was previously publicly accessible has been shielded by strict state secrecy. “This database is irrefutable proof; it is the foundation for future justice and for organizations like the International Criminal Court to be able to investigate,” stated the director of SJH, Ingrid Escobar.

Due to her persistent denunciations, in 2025, Escobar was forced into exile. However, the evidence continues to mount. In November 2025, a group of 252 Venezuelans transferred to the maximum-security prison known as CECOT under an agreement with the Donald Trump administration left El Salvador: 40 of them reported torture in what they called “a cemetery for living men.” In March, a group of experts and jurists accused the Bukele government of crimes against humanity before the United Nations.

Patterns of death within prisons

Leonardo Vladimir Rivera Castillo, 26, was captured on March 31, 2022, and died three days later in the Izalco prison. His body was identified at 2:45 p.m. at Jorge Mazzini Hospital. The police report is unequivocal: “The autopsy establishes that it was a homicide due to the nature of the injuries.”

Rivera was the second inmate to die in custody, just minutes after Sandoval. They died in the same hospital and came from the same prison. The SJH report reveals that 113 people died in the first nine months of the state of emergency, an average of 12.5 per month. In 2023, 127 deaths were recorded; in 2024, 116; in 2025, 121; and in the first three months of 2026, the number had already reached 37, maintaining a rate of about a dozen deaths per month.

Bukele has tried to normalize the situation: “Just as people die in their homes from old age or illness, they also die in prisons,” he stated. However, the data contradicts him. An investigation by the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica documented that “non-violent” deaths in prisons rose from an average of nine per month in 2019 to 39 in 2022.

Regarding the causes of death, the SJH registry indicates that 33.7% of cases were classified by the authorities as having “undetermined” causes, highlighting official opacity. Deaths from “terminal illness” represent only 4.5% of the total, with an average age of 45, reinforcing the conclusion that the deaths are not due to foreseeable natural causes.

One example is Santos Navarro, a vegetable vendor with no criminal record, arrested in July 2023 following an anonymous tip. He died a year later. His family maintains that he died from complications of diabetes that did not receive medical attention; when they received his body, his foot was in a state of decomposition. “He had suffered from diabetes since the gangs kidnapped him in 2004. When he died, the obituary said pulmonary edema, but I know that wasn’t it. They let him die. Or rather, they killed him. I know they killed him,” one of his relatives stated.

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