El Salvador President Bukele denies beating and torture of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in prison

MEXICO CITY (AP) — El Salvador President Nayib Bukele cast aside allegations that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was beaten and subject to psychological torture in a Salvadoran prison on Thursday.

In a post on the social media platform X, Bukele wrote that Abrego Garcia “wasn’t tortured, nor did he lose weight.” In the post, Bukele included pictures and video of Abrego Garcia in a detention cell.

“If he’d been tortured, sleep-deprived, and starved, why does he look so well in every picture?” Bukele wrote.

It comes after Abrego Garcia said he suffered severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation and psychological torture in the notorious El Salvador prison the Trump administration had mistakenly deported him to in March, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.

He said he was kicked and hit so often after arrival that by the following day, he had visible bruises and lumps all over his body. He said he and 20 others were forced to kneel all night long and guards hit anyone who fell.

In the new court documents, Abrego Garcia said detainees at CECOT “were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation.”

Abrego Garcia’s description falls in line with accounts from other Salvadorans who were detained under Bukele’s state of emergency, where the government has detained more than 1% of the Central American nation’s population in its war on the country’s gangs.

Hundreds of people people have died in the prisons, according to human rights groups, which have also documented cases of torture and deteriorated conditions.

Abrego Garcia was living in Maryland when he was mistakenly deported and became a flashpoint in U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. The new details of Abrego Garcia’s incarceration in El Salvador were added to a lawsuit against the Trump administration that Abrego Garcia’s wife filed in Maryland federal court after he was deported.

The Trump administration has asked a federal judge in Maryland to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it is now moot because the government returned him to the United States as ordered by the court.