Human Rights Watch reports that prominent anti-corruption lawyer Ruth López remains in pretrial detention in El Salvador with her case under judicial seal one year after her arrest, and is urging Salvadoran authorities to grant her a prompt, open, and fair trial, lift the secrecy on her case file, and allow her regular contact with her family and lawyers. López, 48, who heads the Anti-Corruption Unit at the human rights organization Cristosal and had spent years investigating alleged corruption by senior officials in President Nayib Bukele’s administration and denouncing abuses under the country’s state of emergency, was arrested in May 2025—initially charged with embezzlement, then illicit enrichment—and the evidence against her has never been presented in open court. Her detention marked the start of an escalating crackdown on government critics: just two days later the Bukele-controlled Legislative Assembly passed a “foreign agents law” that has prompted several civil society groups to close, prominent constitutional lawyer Enrique Anaya was arrested weeks later on money-laundering charges after condemning López’s detention, and at least 140 human rights defenders and journalists fled into exile between May and September 2025, with Cristosal itself relocating abroad rather than face “exile or prison.” HRW situates these events within a broader dismantling of due process and judicial independence in El Salvador since 2021—when the Legislative Assembly summarily removed the Constitutional Chamber magistrates and attorney general—and called on foreign governments, the UN, and the OAS to step up scrutiny, warning that the country is joining the ranks of authoritarian governments like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

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