The first Person convicted from the 25 arrests on Espíritu Santo Island on October 25, 2023

A 17-year-old young man

15 months already in prison

Sentence: 10 years in prison for allegedly providing food to gang members in the mangroves and opening three Twitter and TikTok images on his phone.

With ZERO hard evidence

 

Edwin Samuel Hernández Cali was arrested on July 3, 2022, on the Isla Espíritu Santo (Holy Spirit Island) by four soldiers, with no presence of National Civilian Police agents. Another five men from the island were also arrested the same night. According to several witnesses, all of them were at their homes with their families. The next morning, July 4, they were transferred to the police station located on the mainland in Puerto El Triunfo (Port Triumph). There a police agent signed the legal document of their arrests with the accusation of illicit associations.

 

The Isla Espíritu Santo is an island in Puerto El Triunfo with no criminal groups. The Jobal Cooperative had set up a private security post at the entrance of the island to keep a record of visitors who enter the island and to prevent gangs from entering. In addition, the locals requested a police post to prevent the entry of criminal groups after the war.

 

According to family members and friends who were present at the time of the arrests on the night of July 3, the soldiers from Puerto El Triunfo Naval Base arrested six men from the island, including the young Cali, between 7:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Only one of those arrested was not at home, so the soldiers threatened the family and said they would arrest the father or brother (whom the soldier beat up in front of the family) if they did not turn him in. The young man was out with a friend. At 8:00 p.m. when he arrived home, he decided to go to the authorities to ask why they were looking for him. There were no police officers present (which makes the arrests illegal) in any of the arrests that night. All the men arrested were held in the police post on the Island overnight—a post which has been taken over by the armed forces since the suspension of constitutional rights in El Salvador. The soldiers transferred the men to the police station in Puerto El Triunfo at 5:00 a.m. the following day. 

 

First lie: The soldier who arrested Cali and the other five men the night of July 3, 2022—and was a witness against Cali in his trial—expressed that he saw the six men together at a 100-meters distance at a soccer field that evening, and that all of them ran away as they noticed his presence. Nobody on the island has corroborated this version. On the contrary, all the testimonies from witnesses recount that none of the six men were together, and that the soldiers arrived to their homes at approximately 7:00 p.m., 7:30 p.m., 8:00 p.m., 8:30 p.m., and the last one at 9:30 p.m.

 

Second lie: The same soldier states that he had seen the six men taking food to gang members in the mangroves during a previous military operation of the armed forces. However, there are no photographs, not even one arrest in the military operation where they allegedly found gangs and six men taking food, nor any evidence of these events.  And I insist on the question:  Why have they not arrested any gang members in the mangroves if the soldiers saw them there during their military operation? And why did they not make any arrests on that day if the men allegedly took food to the gangs? Why are they charging 22 men in the island with providing food for the 18th Street/Southerners gang in the mangroves with no photographs, arrests, or evidence of the food? And, if indeed anyone collaborated in this way, wasn’t it under the threat of death—as is the modus operandi of the gangs?    Should victims of the gangs be considered criminals—and therefore victims of the government as well?  

 

Arrest based on hearsay.  The police agent who signed the arrest report the next day in Puerto El Triunfo says that he signed the document because neighbors of the area reported that the six men provided food for the gangs in the mangroves.   

 

Third lie: The soldier says that he confiscated Cali’s phone.  However, the police officer who signed the arrest the next day says he himself confiscated the young man’s phone and took it from his pants pocket. One of the two is lying.  

 

Fourth lie: The soldier says that there are criminal structures on the island. Where are they? Why are they accusing all six men of giving criminals food and not being gang members? Why did none of those arrested flee if they’re gang members, and why were all of them arrested at their homes without putting up resistance?  

 

Another witness from the prosecution was the technology forensic expert who, despite the thousands of photographs and images contained in Cali's cell phone, relied on only three of them to accuse him of being a sympathizer of the Mara Salvatrucha gang (MS-13). First of all, the soldier who had arrested Cali accused him of being a collaborator with the 18-S gang. Second, the forensic expert's report shows that the three photographs he cited as evidence were downloaded from Twitter, Tik Tok, and another social media source—i.e., they were not photographs taken by Cali, which is proven through the meta data. Nevertheless, the expert expressed that the last of the three photographs showing a young man in a corner with the caption of being a gang lookout was taken from Cali's cell phone, and therefore blamed him for being a gang sympathizer on that basis—even though the written report and meta data reflected the contrary.

 

The judge had no technical background to be able to interpret the origin of the photographs, and the expert was not impartial in his statement, nor was there coherence between his written report and oral testimony.  Nevertheless, the judge said that the three images and the soldier's testimony were evidence to convict the young man and sentenced him to ten years in prison. It is not clear what crime he is being punished for, since he is accused of:  providing food for the 18-S gang in the mangroves and/or of being a sympathizer of the MS-13 for opening an image alluding to the gang. Everyone knows you cannot sympathize with two gangs, or you will be killed by one or the other. 

 

On the morning of July 4th, as the six men arrested were being taken to Puerto El Triunfo in a boat, the same soldier told young Cali that they did not kill him because they were not allowed to, but that they would make him rot in prison.

 

Therefore, the families of the six arrested on July 3, 2022, ask for TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND FREEDOM for all the innocents. We will appeal the decision based on the inconsistencies and lack of hard evidence. We also ask that hard evidence of the alleged crimes committed by those arrested on Isla El Espiritu Santo be presented. And if there exists evidence of a crime, then the weight of the law should fall on them—but if not, they should not be paying for a crime they did not commit.

San Salvador, October 30, 2023

Center for Exchange and Solidarity (CIS)

Legal and Humanitarian Aid (SJH)

and families from the Isla Espíritu Santo