By: Insight Crime
December 5, 2023
Despite her release, Dalila Johana Flores remains a symbol of the arbitrary acts being committed under El Salvador’s state of emergency.
Johana, a 24-year-old woman, was released from prison on November 22, after 309 days completely disconnected from her family and the outside world. The release came four weeks after InSight Crime published an investigation demonstrating that neither she nor her family have any links to the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) or Barrio 18, the main targets of the state of emergency in El Salvador that has led to the arrests of more than 74,000 people since March 27, 2022.
“The court issued an official letter to the director of the Preventive and Sentence Enforcement Center, Santa Ana, ordering the immediate release of the accused Dalila Johana Flores Flores,” reads a November 15 letter from the Third Court Against Organized Crime of San Salvador (Tribunal Tercero contra el Crimen Organizado de San Salvador).
Despite not having any criminal record, the armed forces arrested Johana, mother to a three-year-old girl, after they reviewed a complaint filed by the family of the leader of the Barrio 18 Revolucionarios in the Zacatecoluca canton, where Johana and her family live.
“The relatives of the real gang members accused my daughter of being a gang member,” said Maribel Flores, Johana’s mother.
An investigator from an anti-gang unit of the National Civil Police (Policía Nacional Civil – PNC) even swore before a notary in June that Johana and her family were not only innocent, but that they had collaborated to dismantle the Barrio 18 Revolucionarios clique in the canton, and that the gang members threatened them and even shot at the house.
Although this and other documents showing the error were in the possession of the state just days after the arrest, it was not until after the publication of InSight Crime’s report that the case was reconsidered.
“We are on our way back to El Maneadero, thank God,” Johana’s father, Francisco Flores, told InSight Crime as his daughter was being transferred from the Apanteos prison in Santa Ana department to the family home in La Paz.
“She is not that thin, thank God. We have taken great care of her, and it seems that she did get the packages we left for her,” he added.
During the days that Johana was incarcerated, her family could not contact or see her. Not even the lawyer they hired was able to reach her.
InSight Crime Analysis
Under the state of emergency, thousands of Salvadorans have been accused of being part of the country’s infamous gangs and imprisoned without evidence.
Of the more than 74,000 alleged gang members detained in the last 20 months, the government claims that 8,000 have been released. However, various civil society groups, such as Humanitarian Legal Relief (Socorro Jurídico Humanitario — SJH) and the Movement of Victims of the Regime (Movimiento de Víctimas del Régimen — MOVIR), estimate that there are at least 15,000 other victims of unlawful detentions like Johana.
Although homicide rates have hit historic lows under the state of emergency — the projected rate for 2023 is 3.3 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 106 per 100,000 in 2015 — arbitrary arrests like Johana’s show a dark side of the regime that the government’s propaganda apparatus is trying to cover up.
The court’s letter stipulating Johana’s release suggested that the problem is structural.
“The present resolution is issued at this date due to the excessive workload of this court since it must consider the multiplicity of defendants and charges, as well as the plurality of parties and proceedings, which complicates the time required for each of the processes in this court, which is not then an undue delay on the part of this court,” it read.
When asked about this issue, SJH’s director, Ingrid Escobar, said she had no doubt that Johana’s release occurred because “her case became known in the media through a solid journalistic report.”
“It is further proof that … there is such a great delay due to the state of emergency, the administrative disorder, and the institutional weakness, that there are undoubtedly thousands of people in a situation very similar to the one Johana suffered,” she said.
