Ruth López - Cristosal.
Authorities in El Salvador have arrested a prominent human rights defender amid growing concerns over the government’s repressive anti-crime tactics, suggesting policies once used to attack organized crime are being repurposed to target political opponents.
On May 18, El Salvador’s Attorney General’s Office announced the arrest of Ruth López, a lawyer who heads the Anti-Corruption and Justice Unit of the human rights organization Cristosal. López has openly criticized President Nayib Bukele and filed a lawsuit alleging some of his policies were unconstitutional.
Prosecutors charged López with embezzlement during her time as an advisor for Eugenio Chicas, the former head of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal who was arrested in February 2025 and charged with illicit enrichment.
She is accused of helping Chicas siphon funds from state coffers while in office, although authorities have not yet made the evidence public.
López’s arrest is just the latest action targeting critics of the Bukele administration. In early May, reporters with the independent news organization El Faro reported that the Attorney General’s Office was preparing several arrest warrants against members of the news group.
The alleged charges followed shortly after El Faro published a three-part interview with two former leaders of the Barrio 18 street gang.
They provided details on the integral role the Barrio 18 reportedly played in years-long political negotiations that ultimately helped Bukele become mayor of San Salvador, before later becoming president of El Salvador.
The recent attacks on Bukele’s political opponents come alongside a broader suspension of certain constitutional rights as part of the government’s anti-gang policies. Since announcing a “state of emergency” in March 2022, the Legislative Assembly has extended the measure 38 times, and it will continue through June 4, 2025.
SEE ALSO: El Salvador State of Exception: A Security Measure Implemented to Fight Gangs
“The established state of emergency has become the rule, when, as it names suggests, it cannot be an everyday occurrence,” said Julissa Mantilla, a former commissioner of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
InSight Crime Analysis
After detaining hundreds of alleged gang members and all but eliminating El Salvador’s two most notorious street gangs, the heavily criticized apparatus the government used to attack those groups has now shifted to focus on political opponents of the current administration.
As InSight Crime reported in a year-long investigation, the Bukele administration’s unprecedented offensive against the MS13 and Barrio 18 completely overpowered both groups, effectively eradicating the criminal control they once held across the country.
It also concentrated political power in the Bukele administration, aligning the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches to leave minimal room for opposition.
Now, with most gang members behind bars in El Salvador or the United States, and very few top leaders still at large, the government appears to have changed targets.
“This is a dramatic amping up of the Bukele regime’s attacks on civil society,” Jo-Marie Burt, a professor at George Mason University and a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told InSight Crime.
“Bukele is doing precisely what rights groups have long predicted he would do: deploying his near absolute power not just against presumed gang members but against anyone he perceives as a threat to his power,” she added.
A number of local and international human rights groups criticized the Bukele administration’s latest actions. However, Burt said the fact that he has eliminated all checks and balances makes it unlikely his power will be effectively challenged.
“His enormous popularity – largely the result of declining violence and his hard-line anti-gang policies – has allowed him to do this with little repercussion,” she said.
