Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was made to kneel overnight, denied bathroom access and confined in an overcrowded cell with bright lights and no windows, his lawyers say.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, was beaten, deprived of sleep and psychologically tortured during the nearly three months he spent in Salvadoran custody, according to court papers filed on Wednesday evening by his lawyers.
The papers, filed in Federal District Court in Maryland, detailed a litany of horrors that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said he suffered while being held at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, one of El Salvador’s most notorious prisons.
His lawyers said that he and 20 other Salvadoran men who were deported to the prison from the United States on March 15 were once made to kneel overnight “with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion.”
During the time he spent there, the lawyers said, Mr. Abrego Garcia was “denied bathroom access and soiled himself.” He and others prisoners were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell that had no windows, but was outfitted with bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day.
When Mr. Abrego Garcia first arrived at the prison, his lawyers maintained, he was greeted by an official who told him, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.”
Two weeks later, the lawyers added, he had lost nearly 31 pounds.
The court papers offer a startling glimpse of the conditions under which Mr. Abrego Garcia was held. Even though his description aligns with what is known about the prison and the treatment of detainees, the more than 200 Venezuelans who were sent to CECOT on the same set of flights that day were placed in a separate cell block, leaving it unclear whether they were subject to different conditions.
