After seven months of arbitrary detention and a summary and irregular trial before an anonymous judge, lawyer Alejandro Henríquez and pastor José Ángel Pérez, from the El Bosque Cooperative, were released on December 17 by the Second Court of Instruction of Santa Tecla. The release occurred after both accepted the facts outlined in the indictment, according to their defense attorney, Oswaldo Feusier. Both were sentenced to three years in prison, a sentence commuted to compliance with rules of conduct.
The defense stated that they requested the abbreviated process as a strategic move to regain Henríquez and Pérez’s freedom despite the lack of constitutional guarantees and due process.
Henríquez and Pérez were arrested and charged with public disorder and aggressive resistance after participating in a peaceful rally on May 12. They were accompanying dozens of men, women with babies, children, and elderly people from El Bosque, a community of campesinos. They had arrived near President Nayib Bukele’s private residential area, as a last resort to get the attention of his motorcade and prevent more than 300 families from being evicted. They had requested dialogue for months without response.
That day, around 7 a.m., about eight vehicles from the El Bosque cooperative headed for the rally. About 15 minutes into the journey, in the Granadillas canton —which connects to the road to Comasagua— police intercepted them at a checkpoint, got them out of their vehicles, and threatened fines and the removal of license plates. So they walked nearly seven kilometers to the Las Palmas Mall, located 2.2 kilometers from the Los Sueños residential complex, where President Bukele lives and a military tank is parked at the entrance.
Around 9 p.m., dozens of agents with riot shields from the Military Police and the Order Maintenance Unit (UMO) of the National Civil Police suppressed the campesinos and journalists present. In a video released by the press, police officers are seen asking to speak with Pérez, then grabbing him by the arms and taking him away, while members of the cooperative cling to his body and ask the police not to take him. No aggression on the part of the cooperative was observed. Henríquez was captured the next day, May 13.
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Bukele attributed the gathering to “globalist” elites. “Yesterday we witnessed how humble people were manipulated by self-proclaimed leftist groups and globalist NGOs, whose only real goal is to attack the government,” he wrote on X. “The coordinated presence of the media, the obvious transportation of people, and the professionally printed banners confirm this.”
He then sent a bill for a Foreign Agents Law to the Legislative Assembly, dominated by his party. They had already tried to implement a similarly worded law in 2021. In May, Bukele announced that the bill, which soon after passed into law, “will include a 30% tax on all donations received by these NGOs. These funds will be used to pay off the cooperative’s debt.”
In El Salvador, an “abbreviated process” is a special mechanism allowing the criminal process to be concluded without going to trial. The judge did not evaluate all the evidence for and against the case, but instead considered that Henríquez and Pérez accepted the facts for which the Attorney General’s Office had charged them. According to the defense, the version of events presented by the Attorney General’s Office does not describe any crime, but given the legal situation in the country, this was an alternative that allowed for their release.
After hearing the confession, the judge sentenced them to two years for the crime of aggressive resistance and one year for the crime of public disorder. Given that the total sentence was less than three years, the judge “conditionally suspended” its execution. This can take place when “the prison sentence is deemed unnecessary or inappropriate,” according to the Penal Code.
A prison surveillance court will be responsible for supervising compliance with strict rules of conduct. Both must request permission to leave the country, must report if they change their address, and must refrain from the “activities” for which they were convicted. “It’s complicated because the judge cannot suspend or prohibit fundamental guarantees or rights enshrined in the Constitution, such as freedom of expression, association, or demonstration,” said defense attorney Emperatriz Florez in an X Space broadcast the same night of the release.
Since the initial hearing on May 30, the identity of the judges who administered the proceedings has been kept secret. The justice of the peace who ordered their imprisonment concealed her identity in official documentation, citing reforms to the Criminal Procedure Code. At that hearing, the court ordered provisional detention. The reform also allowed the identity of the judge who sentenced the environmentalists on Wednesday to remain unknown.
The reforms establish that the identity of judges may be concealed in cases of all kinds, even when criminal offenses are involved, or when they are against organized crime structures. This reform was approved on March 30 by ruling-party deputies and allies, with a waiver of procedure and without discussion.
“It was a difficult process, given the conditions we currently have in the judicial system, but it was possible. We are in an abbreviated process and we got out. This was the legal way out that we had,” Henríquez said as he left the courthouse. Despite his imprisonment, Henríquez said he will not give up his environmental work. "I will certainly continue to defend human rights. I will continue to accompany communities that have suffered the injustice of theft and dispossession of water and land,” he added. For three years, he will be prohibited from “participating in activities” similar to those described in his trial, a very general and broad imposition.
Upon leaving with Henríquez, Pastor Pérez hugged family members and did not make a first statement to the press. As he walked toward the vehicle that would take him home, El Faro asked what his plans were now that he was free. Sobbing, he said, “I have no plans whatsoever. I just want to be with my family.”
“We achieved a result that is closer to material justice, at least in terms of freedom, although perhaps not in the way we would have liked,” the defense attorney Feusier told El Faro. The acceptance of charges was “a confession that any lawyer, in any court in the world, would have felt confident was grounds for dismissal or acquittal,” he added. “It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, but all things considered, it’s a good result.”
In El Salvador, the judicial system has not functioned as a counterweight to the Executive Branch since the illegal removal of the Constitutional Chamber, the president of the judiciary, and the attorney general on May 1, 2021. Judges also lack job security following the September 2021 reform that forced 30 percent of them into retirement.
Dozens of family members, friends, and members of human rights organizations gathered at the courthouse to await the outcome of the hearing. The Feminist Resistance placed a banner reading, “No to impunity. Yes to the truth.” Some also held images of the two defendants and Cristosal’s lawyer Ruth López, who is still in prison, with slogans such as “Freedom and Justice for Defenders” and “Defending rights is not a crime!” No one covered their faces despite the exile of dozens of journalists and human rights activists in recent months after learning of arrest warrants against them, or after visits from the police to their homes with flimsy excuses.
The court’s decision “is a victory in our struggle. It’s a victory for the communities, specifically for the El Bosque community, for the voice they have raised in defense of Mother Earth,” Gloria Anaya, a member of the Herbert Anaya Sanabria Human Rights Collective, told El Faro. “The victory is also for the Salvadoran people, who are currently being besieged by economic elites who are usurping political power and using the entire apparatus of the state, institutions, the police, and the prosecutor’s office to criminalize and kidnap human rights defenders.”
The arbitrary arrest of Henríquez and Pérez attracted international attention. On November 5, a dozen international human rights organizations signed a public letter demanding that the Salvadoran state immediately release the environmentalists and “refrain from using pretrial detention as a form of advance punishment.” Months earlier, on June 1, Amnesty International declared both of them, along with Ruth López, prisoners of conscience, for having expressed their ideas, beliefs, or identity.
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“These detentions are not isolated events. They are part of a systematic pattern of criminalization that seeks to silence those who denounce abuses, demand justice, and demand transparency in public administration,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General. “The intensification of this pattern in recent weeks is a clear warning sign of the speed with which Nayib Bukele’s government is dismantling civic space.”
The director of Amnesty International said in a statement that the two men “should never have been deprived of their liberty or subjected to criminal proceedings for exercising their right to peaceful protest.” The organization recalled that in El Salvador, other prominent human rights defenders and critical voices —such as Ruth López, Fidel Zavala, and Enrique Anaya— continue in prison for exercising their rights.