SAN SALVADOR, April 23 -- Prosecutors in El Salvador opened a massive consolidated trial against nearly 486 alleged members of the MS-13 gang accused of tens of thousands of crimes including homicide, extortion and arms trafficking. The joint trial, which opened on Tuesday in San Salvador, is the latest in a practice that has been criticised by human rights groups as an infringement of the rights of the accused to defend themselves. Such trials form part of President Nayib Bukele's iron fist approach against criminal groups in El Salvador, which has been under a state of emergency for four years to fight organised crime. "These mass trials lack basic guarantees of due process and thus they increase the risk of convicting innocent people who have nothing to do with the gangs that have terrorized the country for decades," Juan Pappier, Americas deputy director for Human Rights Watch, told The Associated Press. The 486 defendants are accused of being members of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, and accused of ordering more than 47,000 crimes from 2012 to 2022, according to the Salvadoran government. The crimes also include femicide and enforced disappearances. "For years, this structure has operated systematically, causing fear and mourning among Salvadoran families," Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado said on social media. El Salvador once had one of the highest homicide rates in the world, with 103 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015. Since Bukele took office in 2019, government statistics show a drastic drop in homicdes. But human rights groups say Bukele's aproach has violated due process. Mass trials "undermine the exercise of the right to defence and the presumption of innocence of detainees," UN experts have said. The gang leaders are being tried in an open hearing at an Organized Crime Court under a 2023 reform of El Salvador's Penal Code. The country's "state of exception" since March 2022 has suspended fundamental rights, including the right to be informed of the reasons for detention and the right to access legal counsel. In a statement on Tuesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said it "maintains serious worries about the impact on human rights by the unjustified and excessive prolongation of the state of exception in El Salvador" and called on the government to end the measure....