MEXICO CITY — Police in El Salvador have arrested a distinguished human rights lawyer who’s an outspoken critic of President Nayib Bukele.
Ruth Eleonora López, who heads the anti-corruption program at Cristosal, a human rights nonprofit, was arrested at her dwelling in San Salvador late Sunday evening.
In a publish on X, prosecutors accused López of “collaborating in the theft of funds from state coffers” throughout her time working within the authorities of Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a leftist who served as president earlier than Bukele.
Officers at Cristosal mentioned the costs in opposition to López have been a politically motivated act and a part of the Bukele authorities’s “systematic strategy of criminalization of those who defend human rights.”
In a rustic the place many individuals are afraid to talk out in opposition to the federal government, López has been an outspoken critic of Bukele, who took workplace in 2019 and has more and more adopted authoritarian techniques.
To crack down on gangs that for years had dominated life in El Salvador, Bukele declared a state of emergency three years in the past that has suspended civil liberties, together with due course of, and facilitated the imprisonment of about 85,000 individuals. López and her group say tens of hundreds of harmless individuals have been unfairly detained.
She and Cristosal spoke out when Bukele pushed for a court docket resolution that allowed him to run for a second time period regardless of a constitutional ban. They denounced the Bukele authorities’s use of adware to watch human rights defenders and journalists and uncovered obvious corruption within the awarding of contracts through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bukele, an in depth ally of President Trump, who this yr despatched tons of of U.S. deportees to be housed in a Salvadoran jail, has ramped up his assaults on critics in latest weeks.
He lately proposed a brand new regulation that may impose a 30% tax on donations to nongovernmental organizations, together with Cristosal. And he ordered the arrests of 16 bus firm house owners on expenses of sabotage after they didn’t adjust to a decree that every one transportation within the nation ought to be made free.
In a press release, Cristosal mentioned it didn’t know of López’s whereabouts.
“The authorities’ refusal to disclose her location or to allow access to her legal representatives is a blatant violation of due process, the right to legal defense and international standards of judicial protection,” the group mentioned.
Jail guards switch deportees from the U.S., accused of being Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Middle in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 16, 2025.
(El Salvador presidential press workplace)
Final yr, López was named one of many 100 most influential ladies on the earth by the BBC, which lauded her for selling “political transparency and citizen accountability.”
Her arrest sparked outcry. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) was considered one of a number of members of Congress to decry the arrest. He wrote on X that he was “concerned by the arrest of anti-corruption activist Ruth López & what it means for El Salvador’s authoritarian trajectory.”
A coalition of human rights teams together with Amnesty Worldwide and Human Rights Watch demanded López’s launch and mentioned they have been “deeply concerned at the increasingly pervasive environment of fear that threatens freedoms in the country.”
A spokeswoman for the president’s workplace didn’t reply to requests for remark about López’s arrest.
