On Thursday evening, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, refuted recent statements made by attorneys for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to El Salvador in March by the Trump administration.
During his nearly three months in Salvadoran detention, Mr. Abrego Garcia was subjected to psychological torture, sleep deprivation, and physical abuse, according to court documents his attorneys filed on Wednesday.
A three-and-a-half-minute video that Mr. Bukele shared featured pictures of Mr. Abrego Garcia in cozy-looking surroundings, eating, working out, working at a fish farm, getting checked out, and holding a parrot.
Mr. Bukele wrote in English that the man was not tortured nor underweight. Why does he appear so well in every photo if he has been malnourished, sleep deprived, and tortured?
While in Salvadoran custody, Mr. Abrego Garcia was detained in two different facilities, according to Salvadoran officials. He was first detained in the maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center, also known as CECOT, a notorious prison where more than 200 deported migrants, including Mr. Abrego Garcia, were chained in March before being transferred to a detention facility in a different region of the nation.
The film, which was made public on Thursday, seems to depict scenes at the second, less secure facility where inmates work on projects.
When he visited with Maryland Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen in El Salvador in April, Mr. Abrego Garcia informed him that he was not detained in a cell at the lower-security institution. According to Mr. Van Hollen, Salvadoran officials prepared pictures of his meeting with the migrant at his hotel so that it appeared as though the two were having cocktails.