Venezuela’s attorney general Tarek William Saab said his office has opened a criminal investigation into El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro and prisons chief Osiris Luna Meza over alleged torture and other abuses suffered by Venezuelan nationals held in El Salvador’s high-security CECOT prison. Saab told reporters in Caracas that 252 Venezuelans repatriated on 18 July—after a prisoner exchange that also freed 10 US citizens—described sexual assaults, beatings, rubber-bullet injuries, denial of medical care and meals of spoiled food. Prosecutors will examine possible crimes of torture, enforced disappearance and inhuman treatment; the attorney general called on the International Criminal Court and the UN Human Rights Council to open parallel inquiries. The detainees were sent to El Salvador in March after the United States invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Rights groups and family members deny many had gang ties and have long criticised the deportations and prison conditions. Bukele’s office has not formally responded to the new probe. In a social-media post late Monday, the Salvadoran leader said Caracas had first welcomed the swap and now voiced outrage because it had "run out of hostages." The investigation heightens diplomatic frictions between the two countries while Venezuela itself remains under scrutiny for its own detention practices.