Family members, human rights defenders call for release to house arrest in light of life-threatening medical conditions

On May 30, popular movement and human rights organizations in El Salvador organized a press conference to denounce the continued detention of Atilio Montalvo, José Santos Melara and other leaders of the National Alliance for a Peaceful El Salvador. Ten Alliance members were arrested without warrants a year ago under allegations that they were planning to carry out violent attacks during Nayib Bukele’s June 1, 2024 presidential inauguration for an unconstitutional consecutive term. However, the Attorney General has yet to formally present evidence against them as no trial has been scheduled. Police also arrested university student and community journalist Luis Menjívar, who frequently covered the Alliance’s mobilizations, on his way back from a press conference.

For the past year, they have remained in pre-trial detention without due process guarantees. They have been held incommunicado, denied contact with their attorneys and families, leaving relatives without even proof of life. Melara, known to many as Pepe, and Montalvo, also known as Salvador Guerra, are older adults facing complex and chronic health issues, including end-stage kidney disease, diabetes, and hypertension. Human rights advocates warn the dangerous delays in or denials of access to adequate medical care place their lives at serious risk.

According to Lourdes Palacios of the Committee of Family Members of Political Prisoners (COFAPPES): “We would like to remind Salvadoran society that these veterans, who are now unjustly imprisoned, are the ones who [risked their lives] to make democracy and social justice a reality in this country ... [The] regime currently in power in El Salvador is fabricating these crimes and using the state apparatus to persecute [those] who contributed to the country's development and to the democracy that had been taking shape since 1992.”

The National Alliance for a Peaceful El Salvador formed in 2021 as a coalition between former revolutionary fighters from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and former veterans of the Salvadoran military in response to Bukele’s attacks on democratic guarantees enshrined in the Salvadoran constitution and in the 1992 Peace Accords that ended El Salvador’s brutal 12-year civil war.

Montalvo, a signer of the 1992 Peace Accords on behalf of the FMLN, suffers from end-stage kidney disease and was recovering from a stroke and heart surgery when police coaxed him out of the house on false pretenses on May 30, 2024; however, as family members told the press, the courts have denied or ignored repeated requests by his attorneys that he be released to house arrest as the case proceeds.

Since February, the Attorney General of El Salvador has brought a wave of criminal charges against community organizations and high-profile human rights defenders, including Fidel Zavala, a human rights defender who testified to torture he witnessed in the prisons; Ivania Cruz and Rudy Joya, attorneys for the Community and Human Rights Defense Unit (UNIDEHC), who presented cases of corruption and abuse against the Director of Prisons; Alejandro Henríquez, an environmentalist and attorney who was supporting 300 families from an agricultural cooperative in the face of a planned eviction, and, most recently, Ruth López, head of the Anti-Corruption Unit at Cristosal, whom the BBC named as one of 2024’s 100 most influential women in the world.

As Abraham Abrego of Cristosal noted during the press conference: “On behalf of Cristosal, we wish to express our condemnation of the criminalization and persecution of political actors, human rights defenders, journalists, trade unionists, and environmentalists. We believe that in El Salvador, the criminal justice system is being used for persecution and criminalization that is not aimed at uncovering the truth or investigating crimes, but rather at silencing critical voices.”

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To mark one year since the unjust arrest of the National Alliance for a Peaceful El Salvador leaders, who have yet to have an opportunity to prove their innocence before a judge, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) launched a new “365 Days” campaign.