El Salvador: ex-president Funes sentenced in absentia for negotiating with the "maras"

Former Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes was sentenced on Monday (May 29th) in absentia to 14 years in prison for negotiating a truce with armed groups during his tenure. But the man who was head of state from 2009 to 2014 has been in exile in Nicaragua for years.

Former Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes has lived in Nicaragua for years. Here, during an interview after his arrival in Managua, September 8, 2016. © Jairo Cajina, Nicaraguan presidency / via AFP

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The truce brokered by Mauricio Funes with the "maras" - the criminal gangs that have reigned terror in El Salvador - began in 2012, with the support of the Organization of American States (OAS): it would have lasted from a few months to a year, according to the sources.

On Monday, the former leftist president was sentenced to a total of 14 years in prison for belonging to illegal groups and failing to comply with his duties, the Salvadoran attorney general's office said on its Twitter account. His former Minister of Justice and Security was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

According to the Attorney General's Office, the two men "allowed criminal gangs to strengthen themselves economically and territorially in exchange for reducing the homicide rate between 2011 and 2013 so that the current government could benefit and favor it for the elections," the prosecutor's office said.

Mauricio Funes is not in El Salvador, where he is also being prosecuted for corruption: he found refuge in 2016 in Nicaragua, which closed the door to any possibility of extradition by granting him Nicaraguan nationality in 2019.

Current Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele last year launched a "war" against the "maras", declaring a state of emergency in his country and locking up nearly 70,000 suspected members of these armed gangs after a wave of killings. The latter had been attributed by some to the breakdown of a new agreement - secret this time - between the gangs and the president's government: Nayib Bukele has always denied its existence.

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Read on on the same topics:

• El Salvador
• Justice
• Criminality
• Nicaragua