Foreign Property News | Posted by Zarni Kyaw
A grim aerial picture of the notorious El Salvador CECOT prison is going viral, with people pleading for the truth.
On Google Maps – for the world to see – a drone snap of the maximum security prison shows what appears to be a giant pool of blood.
Despite being unverified, the picture has unsettled social media users and human rights lawyers alike with wild conspiracy theories flying around.
Many have suggested the red stain on the map could be the blood of prisoners, with CECOT infamous for being a place “people don’t come out of”. One person suggested the establishment – which has a capacity limit of 40,000 – couldn’t house its inmates “forever, [so have] got to get rid of them somehow”.
(This image has unsettled many who have seen it(Image: GoogleMaps)
The mega-prison is the main tool for El Salvador’s dictator President Nayib Bukele, who launched a brutal crackdown on the violent gangs that ran rampant through his country when he came to power in 2019.
Bukele got to work very quickly, arresting people in the thousands and throwing around 2% of his population in jail. CECOT itself houses more than 12,000 gang members crammed into four-tier bunks in 80-man cells.
Inmates are compelled to eat with their hands as cutlery is prohibited and they're only allowed out of their cells for half an hour each day.
The prison relies solely on artificial light, meaning those who have been incarcerated haven't seen natural daylight since their arrival and sleep is a rarity.
Now this troubling Google Maps photo has got people worried, especially after US President Donald Trump decided CECOT was the perfect destination to send more than 200 men he wanted to get rid of.
One of these men was innocent Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia, someone who Trump’s lawyers have admitted was deported by mistake.
(Inmates remain in a cell at the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) mega-prison, where hundreds of members of the MS-13 and 18 Street gangs are being held in Tecoluco)
(Life in the vast Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) in Tecoluca is dire, with prisoners pleading for officials to give food and medicine for the terminally ill dying around them)
(A tattooed gang member looks at the camera from a cell in the CECOT)
(An inmate puts cream on a fellow inmate's face in a cell at the mega prison)
(In each 100 square-metre cell, there are around 75 notoriously dangerous inmates who sleep on metal cabins and are forced to share just two toilets and two sinks)
(The cells are bare, with thick steel bars separating the suspected gang members from the heavily armed prison guards.)
(Inmates exercise at the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) mega-prison)
(Human rights groups have compared the conditions in the prison as something similar to the concentration camps used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.)
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