Venezuelan men sent last year to a notorious Salvadorian terrorism prison by the Trump administration are suing the US aviation companies that transported them there.

A lawsuit filed this week in federal court in Washington DC accuses the companies CSI Aviation and GlobalX of violating the Venezuelans’ civil rights, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and other violations, for their role in flying the three planes that took the men to El Salvador.

CSI and GlobalX “went to great lengths” to undertake the “rendition flights” to El Salvador, “in concert with the US government, in flagrant violation of US and international law”, the lawsuit reads.

Last year, in March, the Trump administration expelled more than 230 Venezuelan men held in US immigration custody to El Salvador, where they were detained for four months in a maximum security terrorism prison and tortured.