El Salvador crackdown breaks the gangs – at huge cost to human rights

Government prison security officers stand guard inside a prison intended to house 40,000 alleged gang members, in a secluded rural area in a valley near Tecoluca, on 2 February. Photograph: Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images

To visit her father in the Salvadoran community of El Pepeto, Karla García used to run a fearsome gauntlet of gangs and guns.

The two streets separating their homes were a bullet-pocked no-man’s land where members of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18-Sureños groups fought deadly battles for control.