(San Salvador) Nearly 42,000 alleged members of the marasthe criminal gangs operating in El Salvador, have been arrested since the “war” declared to them by President Nayib Bukele three months ago, Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado announced on Thursday.
Posted at 7:11 p.m.
“According to the last count made on Thursday morning, there were 41,846 people arrested” as part of this vast offensive launched at the end of March, the magistrate told public television Canal 10.
Some 33,258 people are “provisionally detained” for six months on instructions from the judiciary, while 8,588 others are awaiting a first appearance and 456 have been released because “they were not linked to the gangs”, it said. -He specifies.
At the end of the first six-month pre-trial detention period, the prosecution has the option of extending it for another six months, added Mr. Delgado.
Body tattoos, used by members to identify with their maraas well as drug seizures, are among the “evidence” held against the suspects, the attorney general said.
More than a thousand vehicles, believed to have been bought with dirty money from racketeering in particular, were seized along with 821 firearms, 8,994 cell phones and $1.5 million in cash, according to the latest report established by the Department of Justice.
The marasthe two main ones of which are Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18, are said to have around 70,000 members, but Nayib Bukele is determined to get El Salvador off the list of countries with the highest crime rate, outside of conflict zones.
After a wave of 87 assassinations at the end of March, the Salvadoran president declared a state of exception allowing the police and the army, deployed in large numbers, to arrest and imprison mareros presumed to have come to join the 16,000 already detained in the overcrowded prisons.
Despite criticism of human rights violations, the fight against crime has earned the young 40-year-old president, fond of social networks, record popularity in the country.