Accounts from the men that Trump sent to El Salvador where they were tortured
They said they were shackled, beaten, shot with rubber bullets and tear gassed until they passed out.
They said they were punished in a dark room called the island, where they were trampled, kicked and forced to kneel for hours.
One man said officers thrust his head into a tank of water to simulate drowning. Another said he was forced to perform oral sex on guards wearing hoods.
They said they were told by officials that they would die in the Salvadoran prison, that the world had forgotten them.
When they could no longer take it, they said, they cut themselves, writing protest messages on sheets in blood.
“‘You are all terrorists,’” Edwin Meléndez, 30, recalled being told by officers who added: “‘Terrorists must be treated like this.’”
From the moment he took office, President Trump has seized on what he calls the threat posed by Venezuela and its autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro, accusing the government and Venezuelan gangs of orchestrating an “invasion” of the United States.
In March and April, the Trump administration made the extraordinary decision to send 252 Venezuelan men to a notorious prison in El Salvador known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, saying they had infiltrated the United States in a form of “irregular warfare.”
Mr. Trump accused the men of being members of a dangerous gang, Tren de Aragua, working in lock step with the Venezuelan government. It was an early salvo in the administration’s standoff with Mr. Maduro, which has only intensified since then, with U.S. warships blowing up Venezuelan boats and Mr. Trump warning of potential military strikes on Venezuelan soil.
But the men received little to no due process before being expelled to the terrorism prison in El Salvador, and they were abruptly released in July, part of a larger diplomatic deal that included the release of 10 Americans and U.S. residents held in Venezuela.
Mr. Trump, speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in September, praised Salvadoran officials for “the successful and professional job they’ve done in receiving and jailing so many criminals that entered our country.” [Continue reading…]