President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador pushed back on claims made by Kilmar Abrego Garcia through his lawyers that he was tortured while he was housed in the country's infamous CECOT prison.
In a court filingon Wednesday, Abrego Garcia claimed that he was physically abused, mentally tortured, and sleep deprived while he stayed at CECOT. His lawyers said they are working with him to file a more detailed account of his stay.
The story Abrego Garcia's lawyers are telling didn't sit well with Bukele. The president posted on X a more than three-minute video clip with pictures of Abrego Garcia at CECOT.
"If he’d been tortured, sleep-deprived, and starved, why does he look so well in every picture? Why would he gain weight? Why are there no bruises, or even dark circles under his eyes?" Bukele wrote in the post.
Some of the photos in Bukele's montage appear to show Abrego Garcia in a lower-security facility. When Abrego Garcia met with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) in April, he told the senator that he was not being held in a low-security part of the prison. The filing that his lawyers put together also suggests that Abrego Garcia was kept in the maximum-security wing with known gang members.
Bukele took issue with these assertions in his post.
"Apparently, anything a criminal claims is accepted as truth by the mainstream media and the crumbling Western judiciary," Bukele wrote.
"But the man wasn’t tortured, nor did he lose weight. In fact, photos show he gained weight while in detention. There’s plenty of footage from different days, including his meeting with Senator Van Hollen, who himself confirmed the man seemed fine," his post continued.