President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador disputed on Thursday night recent claims made by lawyers for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration in March.
According to court papers filed on Wednesday by his lawyers, Mr. Abrego Garcia was beaten, deprived of sleep and psychologically tortured during the nearly three months he spent in Salvadoran custody.
Mr. Bukele posted a three-and-a-half minute video showing images of Mr. Abrego Garcia in comfortable-looking quarters, eating, lifting weights, working at a fish farm, receiving “health checks” and holding a parrot.
“The man wasn’t tortured, nor did he lose weight,” Mr. Bukele wrote, in English. “If he’d been tortured, sleep-deprived, and starved, why does he look so well in every picture?”
According to Salvadoran officials, Mr. Abrego Garcia was held in two separate facilities while in Salvadoran custody: He was initially held in the maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center — the notorious prison known as CECOT where more than 200 deported migrants including Mr. Abrego Garcia were led in chains in March — then moved to a detention facility in another part of the country.
The video released Thursday appeared to show scenes at the second, lower-security facility, where detainees do work projects.
Mr. Abrego Garcia told Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who met with him in El Salvador in April, that he was not held in a cell at the lower-security facility. Mr. Van Hollen said photos of his meeting with the migrant at Mr. Van Hollen’s hotel had been staged by Salvadoran officials to make it look as if the two were sharing cocktails.
Annie Correal reports from the U.S. and Latin America for The Times.
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