The six and a half months that Mario Mejía was away from his family were an “ordeal.” This is how he describes it. He spent two and a half months in a hospital and the rest of the time in the prisons of Mariona and Quezaltepeque, in El Salvador.
They captured him on April 25, 2022. He recounts that they took him away because his vehicle’s registration card had expired and then the agents told him that an anonymous complaint had alerted them that he was transporting gang members, a situation that he categorically denies.
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They undressed me, they took medicine for my diabetes and then they put me in a cell
The day of his capture he was sent to the San Marcos delegation and at night they finally transferred him to Mariona, the place where that ordeal began.
“There in the prison, the reception was beatings from the custodians. They undressed me, took medicine for my diabetes, and then put me in a cell. When I got to that cell there were 30 people, but by 10:00 at night there were already 170.” This is how Mario recounted his first day in prison.
He described that when he entered the bathroom, everything around him was dirty, the toilet paper was thrown away, and the entire floor was wet.
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“I had to go in barefoot because they did not allow me to have yinas; I think that I could have been infected there, but I came to deduce that the next day that I had a raised toenail,” he narrated.
on the third day, Mario’s health worsened, he could no longer get up and was transferred to the Zacamil Hospital.
“I don’t remember anything, until I realized that I was in the Rosales Hospital, but I was already amputated, I no longer had my right foot,” he said.
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I walked into the jail and came out in a wheelchair so that I would never put my feet on the ground again
Two months later he was sent back to Mariona, but upon seeing his situation they did not receive him and he was transferred to the Quezaltepeque prison, where they care for sick inmates. In that place he was in two sectors, one where they are treated in a sector similar to a hospital and the other where there are minor care. He spent a month and a half in the hospital and during that time he found out that four inmates had died.
On November 11, after almost seven months of capture, Mario was finally able to regain his freedom, with alternative measures to detention. “They told my family to bring me and thank God I saw the light outside in freedom, without handcuffs, without anything, without hearing that the guards arrive to shout (at one) that it is time to count or that it is time to get up. It’s an immense happiness to be at home with my family. I walked into jail and left in a wheelchair to never put my feet on the ground again,” he narrated.
Mario affirms that he never lost faith that he was going to get out of that place. He said that he has already started therapies to walk again.
THE GRAPHIC PRESS (EL SALVADOR) / GDA
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