SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Prosecutors in El Salvador on Monday opened a massive, joint trial of 486 people accused of belonging to the MS-13 gang, with charges that include homicide, extortion and arms trafficking, according to the Salvadoran government. The defendants are being tried in an organized crime court in San Salvador, in proceedings that rights groups have criticized as collective trials that, they say, make it harder for accused people to mount individualized defenses.
El Salvador’s attorney general, Rodolfo Delgado, said in a social media statement that the case reflects a longstanding pattern of violence. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both said the trial format and the country’s legal framework heighten the risk of convictions that do not reflect a person’s actual involvement in the crimes alleged.
Human rights groups framed their criticism around what they describe as weaknesses in due process during mass proceedings. Juan Pappier, Americas deputy director for Human Rights Watch, told The Associated Press that 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.” Amnesty International researcher Irene Cuéllar, speaking Tuesday in a statement, said 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.”
According to the Salvadoran government, the 486 defendants are accused of being members of MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, and of ordering more than 47,000 crimes from 2012 to 2022. The charges also include femicide and enforced disappearances, as the trial began under a 2023 reform of El Salvador’s penal code, with gang leaders being tried in an open hearing.
The trial takes place amid El Salvador’s four-year-old state of emergency, which the government has used as part of President Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on organized crime. The Associated Press reported that the “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. The emergency framework, the report said, allows security forces to intercept telecommunications without a court order and extends detention without a preliminary hearing from 72 hours to 15 days.
In a Tuesday statement, 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. Amnesty International also stressed the risk of wrongful convictions, with Cuéllar saying, “Justice is not only about punishing those responsible,” and adding that it is also about “protecting innocent people from being wrongly accused or convicted.”
Prosecutors said 413 of the defendants are being held at the Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison that Bukele ordered built and which has become a symbol of his security policy. The Associated Press reported that many defendants watched proceedings virtually from the prison, while another 73 alleged gang members are being prosecuted in absentia, according to the attorney general’s office.
The trial comes after earlier collective proceedings against gang members. In March 2025, the first such mass trial resulted in prison sentences for 52 members of the Barrio 18 gang, including a longest term of 245 years, and in November 2025 a court convicted 45 members of a rival Barrio 18 Sureños faction and issued a 397-year sentence to one leader, according to the report. Since the state of emergency began, authorities said they have arrested 91,300 people allegedly connected to gangs, while rights organizations say thousands have been arbitrarily detained, with more than 6,000 complaints filed by victims and at least 500 people dying in state custody.