SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AFP) — Tens of thousands of suspected gang members arrested under an internationally criticised crackdown in El Salvador will be detained without trial until at least 2027, after lawmakers approved an extension last Friday.

Over 80,000 Salvadorans have been detained — some of whom Opposition figures maintain are innocent — since gang-busting President Nayib Bukele declared a state of emergency in 2022 that allowed arrests without warrants.

The Legislative Assembly, which has 57 members of Bukele’s ruling party and three from the Opposition, approved a reform last Friday to a law regulating investigations into organised crime.

The approval came just 10 days before a two-year deadline ran out for charges to be filed for the imprisoned detainees.

One of the provisions of the reform said the Attorney General’s office “will bring charges against the organised crime and its members…within a maximum period of 24 months”, while also allowing for a 12-month extension.

Bukele’s hardline approach to El Salvador’s powerful gangs has made him one of the world’s most domestically popular leaders, even as human rights defenders sound the alarm over arbitrary arrests and growing authoritarianism.

The Government accuses all the detainees of being gang members, but with scant evidence or due process, no one knows for sure.

Inside the assembly, Opposition lawmaker Francisco Lira warned that “innocent” people could be tried in the mass trials, which he estimated could be “40 per cent” of those detained.

“I do not defend gangs, criminals, nor extortionists, [but] if there are innocent people, they are being sentenced to spend more time in prison” due to the delays, Lira said.

To file the charges, the Attorney General’s office will “group the defendants into a single case” for each gang, with the main ones under scrutiny being the Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gangs.

Around 300 prosecutors will present evidence in roughly 600 mass trials for the suspects, Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado told a congressional security committee last Thursday.

Delgado said the trials will be divided by the organisation, where they operated, or what crimes the detainees are suspected of committing.

About 200 protesters gathered in the capital San Salvador last Friday, calling the state of emergency declaration which facilitated the gang sweeps “unconstitutional”. The rally marched past both the Legislative Assembly and the Supreme Court, with protesters shouting: “They took them alive, we want them back alive!”

Under the reforms, the mass trials will remain open if more defendants are added to the same case — but if no new defendants are added within two years, the judge may issue a ruling.

If prosecutors do not file an indictment within a maximum period of three years, the judge may dismiss the case. Luis Tapia, a lawyer and researcher at the US-based Due Process of Law Foundation, said mass trials make it impossible to review individual evidence to prepare a defence, “which is a basic guarantee of due process”.

Opposition lawmaker Claudia Ortiz said the reforms are “a reflection of the lack of capacity possessed by the institutions that are supposed to administer justice in our country”.

“Because in more than two years they have not done what they are supposed to do…which is fully investigate the facts,” she added.

An estimated 15,000 of those detained in the gang sweeps are being held at the notorious CECOT mega-prison, according to human rights groups.

Bukele recently made headlines by taking in migrants from the mass deportation drive of his ally US President Donald Trump and putting them in CECOT, where some have reported mistreatment.