UN rights office raises concerns about El Salvador gang crackdown
Al JazeeraUN says some detainees rounded up after wave of deadly violence subjected to ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’. The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has raised concerns about curbs to civil liberties and reports on the use of “excessive” force by police and military officers in El Salvador after a recent wave of gang violence. In a statement on Tuesday, spokeswoman Liz Throssell said Salvadoran police and military forces deployed to gang strongholds under a state of emergency have resorted to “unnecessary and excessive use of force”. In Tuesday’s statement, Throssell said the UN office was “deeply concerned about certain amendments to criminal law and criminal procedure” in El Salvador, including the imposition of higher sentences and the weakening of due process guarantees. “Criminal trials can now be held in absentia, in the case of alleged gang members, or presided over by so-called ‘faceless’ judges, and that is, judges whose identity remains confidential, while the previous two-year limit to pre-trial detention has been eliminated,” she said.