El Salvador’s Fiscalia General de la Republica (Prosecutor General of the Republic) opened an unprecedented mass trial Monday against 486 alleged members of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang, including founders and top-level commanders, charging them collectively with 47,000 crimes committed from 2012-2022, including 29,000 homicides.
The Tribunal Sexto contra el Crimen Organizado (Sixth Tribunal against Organized Crime) initiated what the Fiscalia described as the first mass prosecution targeting the MS-13 command structure. The Centro Judicial confirmed that defendants include members of the “ranfla,” the gang’s highest leadership body, as well as regional commanders and program coordinators from across the country.
Of the accused, 413 are held at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Terrorism Confinement Center, CECOT), President Nayib Bukele’s new high-security mega-prison, while others are detained in maximum-security facilities at Zacatecoluca and Izalco. Arrest warrants remain outstanding for 73 additional fugitive suspects.
Defendants face charges including homicide, femicide, extortion, drug trafficking, forced disappearances, and arms trafficking. The Fiscalia also charged the group with rebellion, alleging that MS-13 sought to maintain territorial control to establish a parallel state in violation of national sovereignty. Prosecutors cited among the most serious allegations the killing of 87 people in a single weekend in March 2022, an event that prompted Bukele to declare a state of emergency that has remained in effect since through successive 30-day extensions approved by the Legislative Assembly.
An anonymous prosecutor said the state possesses sufficient evidence to request maximum sentences, though the Fiscalia did not specify whether it would seek life imprisonment under a recently approved legal reform that introduced life sentences for homicide, sexual violence, and terrorism.
The trial takes place under Bukele’s state of emergency, declared in March 2022 under Article 29 of El Salvador’s Constitution, which suspends constitutional guarantees including the right to legal defense, due process, and the presumption of innocence. More than 91,000 suspected gang members have been arrested under the emergency regime, including thousands who were later declared innocent.
Human Rights Watch and regional rights organization Cristosal have criticized the mass trial format, warning that it risks convicting innocent individuals by failing to individualize criminal responsibility. Rights groups have documented more than 500 deaths in state custody, reports of torture, and the elimination of evidentiary hearings through recent legal reforms. Proceedings are conducted via video link from prison, with defendants appearing before anonymous judges, a format that rights organizations have said does not meet international fair trial standards.
MS-13 and its rival Barrio 18 have been designated terrorist organizations by both the US and El Salvador. US President Donald Trump’s administration has used the designations in part to justify military operations against alleged drug-trafficking vessels. The two gangs originated among Salvadoran youth in Los Angeles before taking root in Central America, where they controlled an estimated 80 percent of El Salvador’s territory, according to the Bukele administration.
