Ana Mercedes Garcia has barely slept since her son was taken away three years ago, one of tens of thousands of men to have disappeared inside El Salvador's grim prisons since 2022.

Ricardo Ernesto Martinez, 31, was arrested on May 10, 2022, two months after iron-fisted President Nayib Bukele launched a war on gangs terrorizing the central American country.

"For the past three years, at 1 am, 2 am, or 3 am... I get up to pray to God and ask him where is my son? Touch the stony heart of that man," Garcia said, referring to Bukele.

Since March 2022, when the president who styles himself as the "world's coolest dictator" declared a state of "exception" allowing for suspected gang members to be arrested and held without trial or due process, some 88,000 people have been thrown in jail.

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