Embarrassing new video contradicts deported domestic abuser's claims he was tortured in El Salvador superjail
Kilmar Abrego Garcia alleges he was physically abused and forced to endure inhumane conditions in El Salvador's notorious CECOT super-prison after being removed from country as part of Donald Trump's border crackdown.
In court documents filed Wednesday, he alleged he was severely beaten, deprived of sleep and psychologically tortured in the CECOT prison.
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.
In a bid to debunk the accusations, the Salvadoran leader shared a video with a message denying Garcia was mistreated.
Garcia's lawsuit alleged constant threats from fellow inmates and harsh, 24-hour lighting. However, the newly released footage paints a starkly different picture.
Rather than the frail, tortured figure described in his court documents, Garcia appears calm and well-adjusted. Garcia described losing more than 30 pounds within two weeks at CECOT, citing overcrowded cells, inmate violence, and threats from guards.
In one segment, Garcia is seen in good spirits as he enjoyed cocktails with Senator Chris Van Hollen, one week after he was moved from CECOT - the maximum security prison where he alleges the abuse took place.
The video shows Garcia - who previously alleged torture and inhumane conditions in El Salvador's notorious CECOT super-prison - appearing in good spirits, smiling and shaking hands with officials at the airport just before boarding a flight to the U.S.
The Maryland Senator, who visited Garcia in El Salvador, said that he 'did not' sense any abuse during their meeting, according to an April 18 interview.
Video from Garcia's time at the Centro Industrial prison in Santa Ana, El Salvador, where he was transferred after CECOT, shows him participating in recreational activities like soccer, fishing, and gardening.
Garcia was also seen smiling and shaking hands with officials at the airport just before boarding a flight back to the U.S.
In the clip, he's seen moving comfortably, with no visible signs of the abuse he described.
Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador on March 15, 2020, was part of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, despite a 2019 U.S. immigration judge ruling that barred his deportation due to threats from gang violence in his home country.
Garcia's deportation was later labeled an 'administrative error,' prompting legal action from him and his wife, who filed a lawsuit claiming he was tortured during his detention.
The Trump administration claimed hand tattoos were evidence that Garcia was a member of MS-13, and footage later emerged showing he was suspected of human trafficking in 2022.
Garcia's deportation was a significant point of dispute for immigration advocates, who called it unjust and hasty. The Trump administration, however, has since defended the decision, labeling Garcia an MS-13 gang member.
Meanwhile, Garcia is facing human smuggling charges in Tennessee.
A federal judge has ruled that he is eligible for release under certain conditions as he awaits trial.
However, his attorneys requested that he remain in jail for fear of another deportation.
Justice Department officials have indicated plans to prosecute Garcia on smuggling charges before considering any further deportation, according to the Associated Press.
Separately, the department has stated that Garcia may be deported to a third country instead of El Salvador, though no timeline has been provided. Garcia's attorneys have expressed concerns that he could be deported immediately.
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Reuters
29 minutes ago
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US fiscal folly could create big, beautiful debt spiral
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In the Treasury forecast, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to increase to over 200% in 2050 compared to the CBO's estimate of around 145%. Scarier still, the Treasury forecasts that the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio will reach 535% by 2100 if current spending plans continue. Proponents of tax cuts argue that they boost GDP growth and thus will slow the rise in debt-to-GDP, but the CBO estimates that the House Bill will only increase real GDP by an average of 0.5%, opens new tab over 10 years or 0.04% per year relative to the CBO's January 2025 projections. The Tax Foundation estimates that the Senate Bill will boost GDP growth by 1.2%, opens new tab in the 'long run'. That hardly makes a difference compared to an expected debt increase totalling almost 10% of GDP. If today's debt dynamics persist, the risk premiums in the U.S. Treasury market will almost certainly climb over the long run. Economists Martin Ademmer and Jamie Rush, opens new tab have analysed the drivers of 10-year Treasury real yields since 1970. They concluded that investors typically demand more risk compensation as the U.S. deficit increases, especially when there is competition from an ample supply of safe assets globally. Thus, Treasury yields rise. Their analysis concludes that these two factors together lifted the natural 10-year real yield for Treasuries by 1.3 percentage points between 2005 and 2023. If the deficit projections for the next decade are realized, this trend should continue. With all this in mind, it was notable that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week, opens new tab that he would not boost long-term Treasury bond sales given today's high interest rates. Since the pandemic, the average duration of U.S. government debt has declined significantly as the Treasury has favoured bills over longer-term instruments in an effort to keep interest expenses under control. One reading of Bessent's comments is that the Treasury is concerned about the country's ability to continue servicing its long-term debts if it borrows at today's elevated yields, a message that could push Treasuries' risk premium even higher, making long-term borrowing even less tenable. This reminds me of a similar episode in which a heavily indebted country faced a sudden spike in its already large deficit. As investors lost trust in the country's ability to pay back its debt, long-term yields rose, which in turn forced the government to issue debt at shorter and shorter maturities. This signalled to the market that the government would struggle to pay the existing debt, and this pushed long-term government bond yields even higher. The country's debt entered a doom loop. The country in question: Greece after the 2009 financial crisis. To be clear, I do not expect the U.S. to experience a similar implosion. 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The Guardian
31 minutes ago
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Hamas says it is ready to enter ceasefire negotiations in ‘positive spirit'
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Hardline factions within Hamas had reluctantly accepted the need for a ceasefire to allow the organisation to regroup and plan a new strategy, one source familiar with the internal debate said. Since a previous ceasefire collapsed in March, more than 6,000 people have been killed in Gaza and an acute humanitarian crisis has worsened. Efforts for a new truce in Gaza gathered momentum after the US secured a ceasefire to end the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran last month. On Tuesday, Trump announced that Israel had accepted the conditions needed to finalise a 60-day ceasefire, during which the parties would work to end the war. When asked on Thursday if Hamas had agreed to the latest ceasefire deal framework, he said: 'We'll see what happens. We are going to know over the next 24 hours.' Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to fly to Washington on Sunday for talks with Trump about the war in Gaza, the recent war between Israel and Iran, and other regional issues. The Israeli prime minister has long resisted a permanent end to the war in Gaza, partly to retain the support of far-right allies in his ruling coalition. But Israel's successes in the war with Iran have strengthened his political position and opinion polls in Israel show strong support for a deal. A senior Israeli official told Channel 12, a major Israeli TV network: 'Judging by the signals from Hamas, there is a high probability that we will start proximity talks in the next few days. If there is consent to proximity talks, there will be a deal.' Other Israeli officials told Reuters preparations were in place to approve the ceasefire deal and that an Israeli delegation was getting ready to join indirect talks brokered by Qatar and Egypt to cement the deal if Hamas responded positively. The proposal includes the release of 10 living Israeli hostages held in Gaza since the Hamas attack on southern Israel in October 2023 that triggered the conflict, and the return of the bodies of 18 more, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, an official familiar with the negotiations said on Thursday. Hamas seized 251 hostages during the 2023 attack. Less than half of the 50 who remain in Gaza are believed to be alive. Aid would enter Gaza immediately under the agreement, and the Israeli military would carry out a phased withdrawal from parts of the territory, according to the proposal. Negotiations would immediately start on a permanent ceasefire. 'We sure hope it's a done deal, but I think it's all going to be what Hamas is willing to accept,' Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told Channel 12 on Thursday. 'One thing is clear: the president wants it to be over. The prime minister wants it to be over. 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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Inside China's horrifying torture jails from gang-rape, human experiments and organ harvesting to inmates having nails ripped out and limbs bent back on notorious 'tiger chairs'
Mass sterilisation, mysterious injections, organ extractions and gang rape - these are just some of the sadistic conditions prisoners face in China, according to activists. Horrifying accounts of sexual abuse, torture, forced confessions and human experimentation have led rights groups to accuse the country of crimes against humanity. A shocking 2015 Amnesty International report revealed the inhumane conditions prisoners endured, and detailed how they were routinely slapped, kicked and hit with shoes or water-filled bottles. Prisoners described being strapped in so-called 'tiger chairs', with their legs tied to a bench as bricks attached to the bottom of their feet forced their legs backwards, causing them unimaginable pain. Amnesty also found that dozens of Chinese firms were producing 'tools of torture', ranging from electric chairs to deadly metal spiked rods. A separate report from Human Rights Watch in 2015 claimed Chinese detainees were being beaten and hanged by their wrists. 'Police are torturing criminal suspects to get them to confess to crimes and courts are convicting people who confessed under torture', the report said. The rights group cited former detainees as saying they were physically and psychologically tortured during police interrogations, including being whacked with electric batons, sprayed with chilli oil and deprived of sleep. Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Council has been warned that China is actively selling human organs on an industrial scale, with body parts of prisoners - such as kidneys, livers and lungs - removed from them while they are still alive. While Beijing has repeatedly denied accusations that it forcibly takes organs from inmates, one survivor of organ harvesting in China revealed the horrific ordeal he endured at the hands of state-sanctioned surgeons. Between 1999 and 2006, Cheng Pei Ming faced relentless persecution for his religious and spiritual beliefs by the Chinese Communist Party, during which he is believed to have been repeatedly tortured. Cheng says he was taken to a hospital where doctors pressured him into signing consent forms for surgery In one of the most chilling episodes of his captivity, Cheng was taken to a hospital where doctors pressured him into signing consent forms for surgery. When he refused, he was immediately injected with an unknown substance which knocked him out. He awoke with a massive incision down the left side of his chest, and scans later confirmed that segments of Cheng's liver and lung had been removed. Images that surfaced on a website that shares information about the practice of organ harvesting clearly show an unconscious Cheng, which he suspects were taken by a shocked nurse or hospital worker. Beijing has denied any wrongdoing, but it admitted that organs were taken out of executed prisoners up until 2015. But many human rights organisations insist that China continues to harvest the organs of the country's oppressed ethnic minorities held in prisons. Internationals detained in China have also exposed the country's vicious treatment of prisoners and its brutal psychological torture methods. One Canadian man, who was detained by Chinese authorities for more than 1,000 days, claimed he was put into solitary confinement for months and interrogated for up to nine hours every day. ormer diplomat Michael Kovrig, his wife Vina Nadjibulla and sister Ariana Botha walk following his arrival on a Canadian air force jet after his release from detention in China, at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Ontario, Canada September 25, 2021. He described the mental torture he suffered while detained Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, was taken into custody in December 2018 in China and was accused of spying. In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp last year, he described how there was no daylight in his solitary cell, where the fluorescent lights were kept on 24 hours a day. At one point, his food ration was cut to three bowls of rice a day. 'It was psychologically absolutely, the most gruelling, painful thing I've ever been through,' he said. 'It's a combination of solitary confinement, total isolation, and relentless interrogation for six to nine hours every day,' he said. 'They are trying to bully and torment and terrorize and coerce you ... into accepting their false version of reality.' Another example that has sparked international condemnation are the harrowing prison camps hidden deep within the remote Xingjiang province in western China. Branded by the government as re-education facilities, the camps are believed to hold approximately one million inmates - most of whom are Uighur Muslim - for 'vocational training', which the government argues is necessary in the region to alleviate poverty and fight extremism. Horrifying accounts of the inhumane conditions inmates endure in these facilities have led human rights groups to accuse China of crimes against humanity and possible genocide. Picture shows watchtowers on a high-security facility near what is believed to a re-educatiion camp on the outskirts of Hotan in Xiangjing The barbarity of Beijing's clandestine prisons has been detailed by those who have been lucky enough to escape. Sayragul Sauytbay, a Uighur Muslim, was forced into a camp in 2017, where she was made to teach other prisoners Chinese in a bid to strip them of their identity and indoctrinate them into the Communist regime. After being released from the camp a year later, she fled China and bravely told of the savagery she witnessed in a 2019 interview with Israeli newspaper Haaretz. She described a world where prisoners were shackled, sleep deprived and subjected to humiliating punishments inside Beijing's brutal gulags. In her testimony, Sauytbay also went as far as comparing the Chinese bid to crush traditional cultures in the Xinjiang region to Nazi efforts to eradicate the Jews. During her time at the camp, she claims to have witnessed the use of mass surveillance by authorities, forced marriage, secret medical procedures, sterilisation and torture. Sauytbay described how inmates were stripped of all of their possessions upon arrival and were handed military-style uniforms. She also claimed that punishments were carried out in a so-called 'black room', a nickname given to it by prisoners because they were banned from talking about it. Tortures included being forced to sit on a chair covered with nails, beatings with electrified truncheons and having fingernails torn out. In one chillingly cruel instance, she saw an elderly woman get her skin flayed off and her fingernails ripped out for a minor act of defiance. Describing the sleeping arrangements at the camp, Sauytbay said around 20 inmates were crammed into a room measuring 50ft by 50ft, with a single bucket for a toilet. She also highlighted how people were constantly watched, with cameras installed in dormitories and corridors. Women were systematically raped, she claimed, and said that she was forced to watch a woman be repeatedly assaulted. In one instance, she saw how a woman was raped by guards as part of a forced confession. 'While they were raping her they checked to see how we were reacting. People who turned their head or closed their eyes, and those who looked angry or shocked, were taken away and we never saw them again,' she said. 'It was awful. I will never forget the feeling of helplessness, of not being able to help her.' Sauytbay also claimed that inmates were routinely starved, but on Fridays, Muslim inmates were force-fed pork and spent hours learning political slogans such as 'I love Xi Jinping.' Mysterious medical experiments were also commonplace, with Sauytbay witnessing how prisoners were given pills or injections. 'Some prisoners were cognitively weakened. Women stopped getting their period and men became sterile.' Another Uighur woman who escaped a detention camp detailed the torture and abuse she experienced at the hands of Chinese authorities. Mihrigul Tursun told reporters in a 2018 press conference in Washington that she was interrogated for four days in a row without sleep, had her head shaved and was subjected to intrusive medical examination following her arrest the year prior. 'I thought that I would rather die than go through this torture and begged them to kill me,' she tearfully told reporters at a meeting at the National Press Club. She also spoke of how her and other inmates were forced to take medication, including pills that made them faint. One day, Tursun recalled, she was led into a room and placed in a high chair, and her legs and arms were locked in place. 'The authorities put a helmet-like thing on my head, and each time I was electrocuted, my whole body would shake violently and I would feel the pain in my veins,' Tursun said. 'I don't remember the rest. White foam came out of my mouth, and I began to lose consciousness,' Tursun said. 'The last word I heard them saying is that you being an Uighur is a crime.' But their account are not the only evidence of of China's atrocious treatment of Uighur prisoners. Drone footage released in 2019 showed apparently Uighur prisoners being unloaded from a train. The detainees appeared to be blindfolded and shackled, their heads shaved. In 2022, a series of police files obtained by the BBC revealed details of China's use of these camps, and described the use of armed officers and a shoot-to-kill policy for those who dared escape. Other reports have claimed that Uighur women have been forced to marry Han Chinese men, many of them government officials. According to a report from the Uighur Human Rights Project, the Chinese government has imposed forced inter-ethnic marriages on young Uighur women under the guise of 'promoting unity and social stability'. But defectors claim that women who have fallen victim into coerced marriages often endure unimaginable abuse, including rape. Another brave Chinese whistle-blower exposed the brutal tactics used by police and guards at re-education centres in Xinjiang. The unnamed Chinese defector spoke to Sky News in 2021, in which he revealed the conditions he witnessed as a police officer in one of the prison camps. He spoke of how prisoners were brought to the re-education facilities on crowded trains and detailed how they would be handcuffed to each other and have hoods placed over their heads to prevent them from escaping. He also revealed how detainees would not be given food onboard the trains and would only be given minimal amounts of water. They were also forbidden from going to the toilet 'to keep order'. It is believed that China implemented the use of re-education camps following an eruption of anti-government protests and deadly terror attacks. In response, President Xi Jinping demanded an all-out 'struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism' with 'absolutely no mercy', according to leaked documents. China denied the existence of camps for Uighur people for years, but when images of the centres began to emerge, Beijing changed its story. The government now acknowledges the existence of the camps but has stood by the fact that they are 'vocational education and training centres' aimed at 'stamping out extremism.' The demonstrators protest against the International Olympics Committee's (IOC) decision to award 2022's Winter Olympics to China amid the country's record of human rights violations in Hongkong and Tibet as well as crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. February 03, 2022 President Xi Jinping recently vowed to reduce corruption and improve transparency in the legal system. The crackdown is predominantly focused on the Uighurs, an ethnic minority group of about 12 million people related to the Turks. But efforts from the Chinese government have also targeted other Muslim groups such as Kazakhs, Tajiks and Uzbeks. And just this week, rights groups have claimed that China is preparing to dramatically scale up forced organ donations from Uighur Muslims and other persecuted minorities held in detention camps. The claim comes after China's National Health Commission announced plans last year to triple the number of medical facilities capable of performing organ transplants in the Xinjiang region, home to the vast majority of Uyghurs in the country. The expanded facilities will reportedly be authorised to perform transplants of all major organs, including hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys and pancreas. The move has prompted warnings from rights campaigners and international human rights experts who say the planned expansion aims to fuel industrial-scale organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. Despite China's attempts to downplay the severity of its prisons , it recently issued a rare admission that torture and unlawful detention take place in the country's justice system and has vowed to crack down on illegal practices by law enforcement. The country's opaque justice system has long been criticised over the disappearance of defendants, the targeting of dissidents and regularly forcing confessions through torture. The country's top prosecutorial body the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) has occasionally called out abuses while President Xi Jinping has vowed to reduce corruption and improve transparency in the legal system. The SPP announced last week the creation of a new investigation department to target judicial officers who 'infringe on citizens' rights' through unlawful detention, illegal searches and torture to extract confessions. Its establishment 'reflects the high importance... attached to safeguarding judicial fairness, and a clear stance on severely punishing judicial corruption', the SPP said in a statement. China has frequently denied allegations of torture levelled at it by the United Nations and rights bodies, particularly accusations of ill-treatment of political dissidents and minorities. Drone footage emerged showing police leading hundreds of blindfolded and shackled men from a train in what was believed to be a transfer of inmates in Xinjiang The Chinese government has acknowledged the existence of the camps but has stood by the fact that they are 'vocational education and training centres' But several recent cases involving the mistreatment of suspects have drawn public ire despite China's strictly controlled media. A senior executive at a mobile gaming company in Beijing died in custody in April last year, allegedly taking his own life, after public security officials detained him for more than four months in the northern region of Inner Mongolia. The man had been held under the residential surveillance at a designated location system, where suspects are detained incognito for long stretches without charge, access to lawyers and sometimes any contact with the outside world. Several public security officials were accused in court this month of torturing a suspect to death in 2022, including by using electric shocks and plastic pipes, while he was held. The SPP also released details last year of a 2019 case in which several police officers were jailed for using starvation and sleep deprivation on a suspect and restricting his access to medical treatment. The suspect was eventually left in a 'vegetative state', the SPP said.
