El Salvador imposes sentences of more than 1,000 years on gang members

by · UPI

Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Courts in El Salvador have imposed prison sentences totaling centuries on members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, in one of the harshest judicial decisions since the country launched its anti-gang offensive under President Nayib Bukele.

The Attorney General's Office said 248 MS-13 members received what it described as "exemplary sentences" for their involvement in 42 murders and 42 disappearances, as well as other serious crimes.

Among the sentences, a court condemned Marvin Abel Hernández Palacios to 1,335 years in prison, while 10 other convicted gang members received terms that ranged from 463 to 958 years. According to prosecutors, the crimes were committed between 2014 and 2022.

Since March 2022, Bukele has confronted gangs under a state of emergency that allows arrests without judicial warrants and extends pretrial detention periods.

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According to official figures, more than 90,000 people have been detained since the state of emergency began. About 8,000 were later released after authorities determined they had no links to criminal organizations.

The government attributes a historic reduction in homicides to this strategy. For years, El Salvador ranked among the countries with the highest homicide rates in the world.

Under the emergency framework, authorities intensified mass incarceration policies against MS-13 and the rival Barrio 18 gang. Many of their members were transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Center, known by its Spanish acronym CECOT, a megaprison built by the Bukele administration to hold inmates considered highly dangerous.

According to official figures, MS-13 and Barrio 18 were responsible for an estimated 200,000 deaths over three decades, and at their peak controlled up to 80% of the country's territory through extortion, killings and territorial dominance.

The Attorney General's Office said the gangs extorted shop owners and small business operators, demanding regular payments under threat of death.

"Some people were forced to shut down their businesses out of fear," the office said in a statement.

Human rights organizations, however, argue that the security policy is being applied with limited due process guarantees. They have reported abuses, arbitrary detentions and a lack of individualized trials in many cases.

The government rejects those accusations and defends the state of emergency as a necessary measure to dismantle deeply entrenched criminal structures.

MS-13 originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s, formed by Salvadoran migrants who fled the country's civil war. The gang later spread to Guatemala and Honduras, contributing to regional violence and migration flows toward the United States.

Earlier this year, the United States designated MS-13 as a terrorist organization, reinforcing its international prosecution.

The sentences of hundreds and thousands of years in prison consolidate the judicial phase of Bukele's offensive against gangs, in a country that now reports much lower levels of violencem but continues to face intense domestic and international debate over the cost of the strategy to the rule of law.