Former Salvadorian President Sentenced to 14 Years for Overseeing Mara/Barrio 18 Gang Truce

“Socalj” for Borderland Beat

Former Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes was sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges of negotiating with gangs and illegal groups. Funes was found guilty of having ties to criminal groups and for which he was sentenced to 8 years in prison, while another 6 years were added to his sentence for the crime of breach of duty.

In 2012 and 2014 the government of El Salvador under the command of Funes maintained an armistice with the Mara Salvatrucha gangs, Barrio 18, and other minority groups with the aim of reducing homicide figures. 

The so-called gang truce, negotiated in 2012, was initially reported by the news outlet El Faro. It in fact had resulted in a drop in homicides and was even recognized by the Organization of American States (OAS), whose secretary general at the time, José Miguel Insulza, said that the OAS would be the guarantor of the agreement.

“Former officials allowed the gangs to strengthen themselves economically and in the territory, in exchange for reducing the homicide rate between 2011 and 2013, in order to benefit the government in power and favor it in the elections,” the FGR said.

The accused criminal dealings included public investments in the controlled neighborhoods, benefits for the prisoners who are members of said gangs, and a weaker security presence in the areas controlled by the Mara gangs.

Former Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes.

In 2016, Funes denied those accusations against his government where he was accused of making deals with imprisoned gang leaders. Funes sought refuge in Nicaragua, where he has the protection of President Daniel Ortega, who granted him Nicaraguan citizenship. El Salvador changed its laws last year to allow trials in absentia. It has also been reported that the court has announced that 7 intermediaries of the truce between Funes and La Mara were arrested and sentenced to 2 to 3 years in prison.

In a message on Twitter, the former president argued it was “an unfair sentence without any evidence.” “The FGR did not present any proof that the benefits supposedly received by the gang members were authorized by the presidency. There is no doubt that the Specialized Investigating Court is obeying the right,” he added.

The sentence against Funes comes at a critical time in El Salvador. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has launched a bloody war against the gangs, which has so far led to 68,000 arrests, at least 5,000 of them have been freed, according to authorities. For more than a year, the country has been under a state of emergency that has been fiercely criticized by human rights organizations.

Bukele’s government has maintained a state of exception since March 27, 2022, as a response to gang violence. The measure was adopted after MS-13 and Barrio 18, the two largest gangs in the country, organized a massacre that left 87 dead in the streets in just one weekend. According to journalists’ investigations, the massacre was due to a rupture of the pact that Bukele had with the gangs since the beginning of his administration, which kept the violence low.

Mass Gang Incarceration Torture & Deaths

Cristosal, the main defender of human rights in El Salvador, released a report on Monday denouncing the hellish conditions in Bukele’s prisons, where dozens of inmates have been tortured and strangled. Since March 2022, when current President Bukele implemented emergency powers to deal with the country’s issue of gang violence, 153 of the prisoners have died in custody.

In its report, Cristosal documents 153 inmate deaths in state custody between March 2022 and March 2023. Notably, all of the deceased inmates were arrested during this same period. Of these, 29 died violently, and another 46 by "probable violent death" or suspected criminality. Unfortunately, the number could be higher, as some of the cases were reported after March 23 of this year and were not included in this count.

Signs of torture on the back of a prisoner in El Salvador.

Among those 75 cases, the investigation points out as a “common pattern” the presence of lacerations, hematomas caused by beatings, wounds with sharp objects, and signs of choking or strangling on the cadavers. According to the report, death by mechanical asphyxiation is one of the “most frequent” causes of death described in medical-legal reports.

One of the clearest cases is that of a 30-year-old man whose dead body was given to his relatives with a protuberance on the neck. The medical documents reported that he died as a result of “mechanical asphyxiation by strangling.” The autopsy of another man, a 42-year-old who died in a police cell, determined the cause of death as “mechanical asphyxiation by choking.

The report also includes horror stories of ex-inmates who remained in prison for months under the state of exception and were eventually declared innocent. “In some cases, during an entire day, they are only allowed to drink a cup of water.” A 20-year-old man detained in the Mariona prison recalls that a guard, known as Montaña, constantly threatened inmates with death. “You’ll leave here alive only if you’re lucky,” he would say to the prisoners. “While [inmates] kneeled, [guards] gave them electric shocks, and they drew blood from one. When they entered the area where the guards stayed, they were beaten again,” the report says.

Murder Rates Have Dropped

Murders in El Salvador have dropped by 56.8% since the emergency powers were enacted last year in 2022. In 2022, there were approximately 8 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in El Salvador. Since 2015, when it stood at 103 per 100,000, the murder rate has been dropping annually in the country.

Currently, El Salvador has a lower homicide rate than countries like Honduras, Mexico, and Colombia.

Sources El Pais, El Pais, Statista