In the middle of the night on 11 January 2023, word spread around the small rural town of Santa Marta in El Salvador that police were coming to arrest five community leaders. Outraged, residents of the town mobilized to erect barricades in the main square, stopping police in their tracks. Eventually the officers were let through after promising that the five men would face due process.
More than a year on, however, Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega – known as the Santa Marta 5 – remain in detention. The arrests are believed to be politically motivated. Lack of evidence aside, campaigners say the charges – dating back to the men’s days as leftist guerrillas during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war in the 1980s – have no basis because the crimes committed in this era are covered by an amnesty.
