SAN SALVADOR: A law firm hired by Caracas filed a petition in El Salvador's Supreme Court Monday for the release of 238 Venezuelans deported from the United States to a notoriously harsh prison in the Central American country.
US President Donald Trump invoked rarely-used wartime legislation to fly the men to El Salvador on March 16 without any kind of court hearing, alleging they were members of the violent Tren de Aragua gang, which their families and lawyers deny.
The deportations took place despite a US federal judge granting a temporary suspension of the expulsion order, and the men were taken in chains, their heads freshly shorn, to El Salvador’s maximum security “Terrorism Confinement Center” (CECOT).
On Monday, lawyer Jaime Ortega filed a habeas corpus petition, demanding justification be provided for the migrants' continued detention.
“They have not committed any crimes in our country,“ Ortega said at the court, while elsewhere in San Salvador, hundreds of protesters clamored for the Venezuelans' freedom.
Ortega said he was hired by the Venezuelan government and a committee of relatives of detained Venezuelans.
He added he had a mandate from families of 30 of the prisoners, but would work for the release of the entire group.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said the motion seeks the release of countrymen he described as having been kidnapped.
“A week after being taken to concentration camps, neither the government of the United States nor Nayib Bukele has published a list of who they have kidnapped in El Salvador,“ Maduro said during an event broadcast on national TV, referring to the president of El Salvador.
Bukele is hailed at home for his crackdown on violent crime -- with tens of thousands of suspected gangsters sent to the CECOT, which he had specially built.
Human rights groups have criticized the drive for a wide range of alleged abuses.
Many habeas corpus petitions have been filed with the Supreme Court seeking the release of people arrested during the crackdown on gangs, but very few have received a response.
Bukele replaced senior judges and the attorney general, and a new-look Supreme Court, friendly to the president, allowed him to seek reelection last year despite a constitutional single-term limit. He won.
“Bukele already violates the human rights of thousands of Salvadorans... and now he is preparing to violate the rights of these people from Venezuela who have not been proven guilty of a crime,“ protester Antonio Medrano, 47, said in the capital Monday.
