El Salvador’s security forces have arrested more than 5,000 gang members in less than a week, Central American President Naib Boukele said on Sunday.
Mr Boukele said on Twitter that 5,184 gang members had been arrested in eight days, posting photos of detainees and videos showing them in armor.
Police said earlier that some 100 suspects were arrested on Sunday alone.
They are accused of illegal possession of weapons, being members of illegal organizations, drug possession and sexual violence.
The Salvadoran government declared a state of emergency a few days ago due to a wave of assassinations. Authorities have also made it much harder for offenders to commit crimes committed by members of the “Maras”, as gangs are called in the Central American country.
Human rights groups have expressed concern about the sweeping nature of the measures, which include the suspension of constitutional rights; in response, President Boukele described NGOs, human rights defenders and journalists as gang allies.
“It is now clear who the accomplices of the gang members are,” the head of state said. “All of them came out to defend them: investors, drug traffickers, corrupt politicians and judges, human rights NGOs, the ‘international community’, the DEAD (American Committee for Human Rights), the United States George Soros’s journalists and the Open Society media outlet, Mr. Boukele listed. “Your masks have fallen,” he added.
The forty-year-old president of El Salvador, in power since 2019, enjoys high popularity, mainly thanks to his promises to fight organized crime.
But his penchant for authoritarianism has drawn sharp criticism from his political opponents, NGOs and the international community.
El Salvador, a country of about 6 million people, has one of the highest homicide rates on the planet.
According to police figures, in 2019 the homicide rate dropped to 36 per 100,000 inhabitants, more than tripled compared to three years earlier.
In the days of Mr. Boukele, the index fell to 20 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The president denies that his government has concluded gang deals in the background, despite a series of revealing reports in the press.
SOURCE: AMPE
Source: Capital
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