Credit: YURI CORTEZ / AFP via Getty Images
(CNN Spanish) -
The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, rejected that his government has a pact with the Mara Salvatrucha MS13 gang to reduce the number of murders in exchange for criminal benefits, as published on Thursday by the digital newspaper El Faro.
According to its investigation, El Faro says that reports prepared by the same Salvadoran prison system record meetings between officials and gang leaders held in the maximum security prison located in Zacatecoluca, a municipality 63 kilometers from San Salvador.
CNN has not been able to independently corroborate the existence of the reports noted in the publication.
The El Faro investigation indicates that the negotiation between the government and the gangs includes political support in exchange for the promise to repeal laws and weaken the maximum security regime in prisons if next February they achieve control of the Legislative Assembly, in the elections to elect 84 deputies and 262 local governments.
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“They accuse us of violating the human rights of the terrorists.
Now they say we give them privileges?
Show me a privilege.
Only one, ”the president wrote on his Twitter account.
Bukele included in his tweet photographs of the search, carried out at the end of last April, when the gangs increased the daily average of murders for several days.
At that time, the Salvadoran government ordered the gang members to be confined 24 hours a day, to put metal plates on the barred doors to prevent communication through signals and, in addition, to mix the gang members in their cells regardless of whether they were from sides. rivals.
According to El Faro, the decision to mix members of different gangs in prisons was canceled after meetings between officials and leaders of criminal structures.
The government rejects it.
"Aren't they themselves the ones who have gone REPORTING US for the treatment we give to terrorists?
'Someone' is passing on false information, "Bukele wrote in another tweet.
However, the Attorney General's Office opened an investigation after the publication.
“We are going to open the corresponding investigation and we are going to see what happens.
No one should take advantage of the institutions to negotiate with terrorists, ”said Raúl Melara, attorney general, during a telephone call, in the interview on channel 21 of Grupo Megavisión.
Melara recalled that there are politicians and former public officials prosecuted for the truce between gangs of 2012, during the government of former president Mauricio Funes, who has denied any negotiations with gangs, but admitted that he provided facilities for the pact between criminal groups to be carried out.
El Faro revealed that negotiation.
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For his part, Osiris Luna, current director of Penal Centers, rejected this Friday that there be a new truce.
Luna is one of the officials who, according to the publication, met with gang leaders.
"In this administration we took away benefits that existed in prisons, it was the government of President Bukele where we dismantled for the first time the mafias that were in prisons," said Luna, during an interview, on Radio 102.9.
In the official's opinion, these publications seek to affect the results of the security plan called Territorial Control, which, according to the Government, has reduced homicides since Bukele took office on June 1, 2019.
According to Police statistics, the daily average of murders fell from 9.2 in May 2019 -the month before Bukele took office- to 3.9 in August, according to records from the Ministry of Justice. Justice and Security.
Mara Salvatrucha Nayib Bukele
