Editor’s Note: This article contains two graphic images of the corpse of a man who died in state custody in El Salvador. The images have been censored by default, but readers can choose to view them by clicking on the preview.
An ambulance pulled up in front of the Zacamil Hospital morgue in El Salvador at 8:00 pm on August 24, 2022. It was carrying a man whose lips and face were sunburned, and who had a circular hole in the right side of his chest, just big enough to fit a finger.
The man’s name was Dionicio Adonay Ramírez Rivas, a 24-year-old fisherman who was arrested under the state of exception on Los Blancos Beach in La Paz. He was a victim of violence inside Mariona Prison, although this detail was omitted from official reports.
Ramírez Rivas is one of the 547 people who have died in Salvadoran prisons since President Nayib Bukele installed the state of exception on March 27, 2022, according to a count by Socorro Jurídico Humanitario. The total is current as of July 15, 2026.
Three months into the state of exception, on the morning of June 30, 2022, the fisherman was helping his father clean a swimming pool when four police officers arrested him on allegations that he had collaborated with a gang.
Ramírez Rivas had no tattoos or gang history, but was imprinted in Mariona. José Valle, his father, recalls that the authorities told him not to hire a lawyer because it would be useless.
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In El Salvador, Fear and Silence Shroud the Dead
The family was also not informed of the first hearing, which took place at the Specialized Investigative Court C2 in San Salvador, along with 29 others arrested in San Luis La Herradura, Olocuilta, and Cuyultitán.
The fisherman’s right to a defense was violated; he was not allowed to present exonerating evidence that he had not participated in an illegal organization.
Two months later, on August 24, Ramírez Rivas left Mariona. Upon arrival at the emergency room at Zacamil Hospital, he was dead.
When a doctor examined the body in the ambulance, she determined that he had been dead for six to eight hours, according to the thanatochronodiagnosis (a set of medical-forensic techniques and observations used to estimate the time elapsed since a person’s death).
Ramírez Rivas’s face showed signs of sunstroke, one of the forms of torture described by survivors of the regime: punishments under the scorching sun of Mariona.
José Valle alleges that his son was the victim of a crime — a murder involving a puncture wound to the chest.
Why his father spoke out
Photographs taken by a funeral home employee in San Luis Talpa show that the body had a reddened puncture wound, approximately 1.5 mm in diameter, located about 10 cm below the right collarbone.
But signs of violence on his body were ignored in official reports. The obituary and the autopsy signed by the forensic pathologist from the Institute of Legal Medicine, Manuel Antonio Mendoza Rivas, state that the cause of death was pulmonary edema.
The state has repeatedly hidden violent deaths in prisons under this clinical euphemism. It has been written in hundreds of autopsies.
The Forensic Medicine autopsy states that the death is related to high blood pressure. “Taking into account, furthermore, the deceased’s obesity, which increases the risk of metabolic diseases,” reads one of the official documents in El Faro’s possession.
Not a word about the hole.
The father sought justice for his son’s death, but the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman and Attorney General’s Office—institutions under regime control—ignored his requests.
The San Salvador court handling the case also did not order an investigation into Ramírez Rivas’s death. In the ruling closing the case, the judge merely states that “the death has been confirmed” as resulting from pulmonary edema.
The case has now gone four years without accountability. The government has classified all information related to deaths in correctional facilities as confidential.
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Ramírez Rivas had a four-year-old daughter. His wife was pregnant with twins when he was arrested.
Valle recounts that, due to the stress and anguish of the family, the babies—who were five months into the pregnancy—died in their mother’s womb.
He says he agreed to speak with El Faro because his son was innocent. He wants his granddaughter to know, in the future, that his father was not a criminal.
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El Faro has published dozens of testimonies of victims of human rights violations under the state of exception. Over the last four years, the newsroom has repeatedly requested interviews with the police, the Attorney General’s Office, and the Bureau of Prisons. None responded.
This is part of a broader policy of silence by the Salvadoran regime in the face of corruption cases within Nayib Bukele’s administration, his negotiations with gangs, and systematic human rights violations.
