Usulutan, El Salvador – For the previous 5 months, Marcela Alvarado has made an nearly every day pilgrimage to totally different Salvadoran authorities places of work demanding her son Jose Duval Mata Alvarado’s launch.

Mata Alvarado, a 26-year-old tractor driver with three youngsters, has been in jail since April of final yr, when he was accused of being concerned with a gang beneath an emergency order imposed throughout the Central American nation a month earlier.

A decide ordered his launch in September, however Mata Alvarado was instantly rearrested after being freed – and stays behind bars at this time.

“I’m actually distressed as a result of they are saying that there [in prison] they will die,” stated Alvarado, 51, who informed Al Jazeera that her son was falsely accused and has no ties to gangs.

Greater than 64,000 Salvadorans have been arrested throughout the federal government’s “state of exception”, which lawmakers prolonged for the eleventh time on February 15 and suspends sure civil liberties, comparable to the precise to a lawyer and closing dates on pre-trial detention.

President Nayib Bukele has defended the measure amid criticism from rights teams, saying it has decreased homicides, extortion, and visual gang presence. Crimes charges have dropped sufficient, at the very least within the quick time period, that Salvadorans report feeling safer.

The nation’s safety minister additionally lately stated it could stay in place till all gang members are arrested. Officers estimate that meant at the very least 10,000 extra arrests.

However now, the police employees union and human rights teams have stated a rising variety of Salvadorans detained beneath the state of exception – together with Mata Alvarado – have been “re-arrested” upon launch after both being granted bail or having their circumstances dropped.

This has raised fears that the federal government plans to make sure the folks already behind bars keep there, significantly within the lead-up to the February 2024 elections, during which Bukele has stated he’ll search re-election in violation of the nation’s structure.

“From the start, we identified that it was not so loopy to assume that the state of exception may lengthen till the elections,” stated Eduardo Escobar, a lawyer and director of Salvadoran NGO Citizen Motion (Accion Ciudadana).

With residents’ approval charge for the coverage at 76 %, that suspicion has “now been confirmed”, Escobar informed Al Jazeera. “They’ve created a story that there’s a authorities that pulled its pants up and eradicated the gangs right here,” he stated. “They’ll’t shut the difficulty now, as a result of it’s the best achievement that they’ve had.”

Few releases

The Salvadoran authorities has not offered knowledge on how most of the circumstances have reached a verdict, which generally can take years within the nation’s justice system.

By mid-January, about 3,745 folks arrested through the state of exception – however who Bukele has stated are harmless – had been launched, in line with the latest authorities statistics.

However with authorities knowledge displaying that 49,000 folks had been arrested nationwide as of final August, these tens of hundreds of detainees needs to be eligible for a listening to to find out if they are often launched from pre-trial detention, which may solely final six months.

Hector Carillo, director of the entry to justice programme on the Basis for the Research of the Utility of Legislation (FESPAD), a Salvadoran NGO, stated defence legal professionals are buckling beneath the load of all their circumstances and lots of are unable to request these particular hearings.

Prosecutors additionally haven’t had time to assemble sufficient proof throughout the six-month interval of pre-trial detention, in order that they have usually requested extensions. “This results in folks persevering with in detention,” Carillo stated.

For prisoners who had been launched, two kinds of rearrests had been occurring, in line with the police union and human rights teams following the difficulty.

The primary is seen within the case of Mata Alvarado, who his mom stated was instantly rearrested outdoors the jail. On the finish of September, his mom stated she obtained a name from an official saying her son was being launched. Fifteen minutes later, Alvarado’s cellphone rang once more. This time, the particular person on the opposite finish informed her to not come to the jail.

Weeks later, she stated she obtained data that her son had been arrested once more for “illicit affiliation” – a standard cost levied towards folks accused of being concerned with gangs through the state of exception.

In different cases, folks return to their communities and resume their every day lives earlier than being taken again into custody. In a single case reported in native media, a person who was launched as a consequence of lack of proof was arrested once more at his office for a similar crime of “illicit affiliation”. His spouse informed the press that she frightened about his well being as a result of he started to expertise coronary heart issues whereas in jail the primary time.

Arresting somebody twice for a similar crime is illegitimate beneath Salvadoran regulation.

Marvin Reyes, a consultant of the police employees union, stated he believed police are finishing up these arrests based mostly on a “political order” that might solely come from a high-ranking authorities official.

The Salvadoran nationwide police and Bukele’s workplace didn’t reply to requests from Al Jazeera on whether or not an order had been issued to rearrest detainees upon their launch. However Reyes stated that no matter is behind it, the coverage’s intention is evident: “To take care of the variety of folks in jail.”

New mega-prison

Retaining folks behind bars has solely additional strained the Salvadoran jail system, which was already at a breaking level earlier than the inflow of prisoners through the state of exception.

Human rights teams had beforehand reported overcrowding, unsanitary situations, and shortages of primary meals and hygiene merchandise within the services. This has worsened because the jail inhabitants is sort of triple the nationwide capability of 30,000 folks, in line with a brand new Human Rights Watch report based mostly on a leaked database.

In-custody deaths through the state of exception additionally reached 107 as of February 15, in line with a seamless investigation by Salvadoran NGO Cristosal.

On January 31, Bukele introduced a brand new jail with a 40,000-person capability, the biggest within the area. In a video posted on Twitter, Bukele toured the huge concrete facility, referred to as the “Middle for Confinement of Terrorism”, with officers together with prisons director Osiris Luna, sanctioned by the US for corruption.

They visited windowless isolation cells, a room filled with police riot gear, and a management room for 24-hour monitoring fuelled by the advanced’s 19 surveillance towers – all of which they stated had been wanted within the combat towards “terrorists”, as the federal government refers to gang members.

However for a lot of kin of Salvadorans detained through the state of exception, listening to tales from the prisons is what pushes them to be so insistent about their family members’ launch.

“They [the officials] inform me to have persistence, however I inform them that I don’t wish to be referred to as from a funeral dwelling sometime, telling me to come back get him as a result of he’s lifeless,” Alvarado informed Al Jazeera about her son. “They took him alive and I need him alive.”