The Congress of El Salvador, dominated by the ruling party, approved this Wednesday reforms to the Law against Organized Crime to increase the penalties for gang leaders and to carry out criminal proceedings by criminal structure, which would annul individual procedures.
The first reform, approved with the votes of 67 parliamentarians out of 84 in the Legislative Assembly, establishes criminal procedures by gang group or cell, which means that those detained in the context of the emergency regime, implemented to combat the maras (gangs ), could be grouped into one of the structures to be subjected to a single criminal process.
According to the opinion read during the plenary session on Wednesday, the foregoing “would make it easier for judges to sentence criminals more quickly and prevent members of these criminal structures from being released.”
Opposition deputy Jaime Guevara pointed out that the approved reform represents “a risk and a threat to the innocent prisoners who are in jails waiting for a fair criminal procedure.”
“This would mean that anyone captured is included in a group of gangs so that they face their criminal proceedings as a structure and not individually, which violates due process,” he said.
Parliamentarian Claudia Ortiz, for her part, pointed out that the reform “will only serve to make the job easier for the Prosecutor’s Office, so that they no longer have to investigate.”
The number of people detained in El Salvador in the context of an emergency regime amounts to more than 71,770, according to the head of the Ministry of Security, Gustavo Villatoro, recently said.
According to recently released complaints collected by humanitarian organizations, the number of “direct victims” of human rights violations under the emergency regime reached at least 5,490.
The figures shared by social organizations indicate that there are some 13,581 “violating acts”, of which the most denounced is arbitrary detention in 95.32%, between March 27, 2022 and June 30 last.
INCREASE IN PENALTIES
The pro-government deputies and their allies in Parliament also approved, with 67 votes and at the request of the government of President Nayib Bukele, a reform to increase prison terms for gang leaders.
The maximum sentence for the ringleaders will go from 45 to 60 years in prison.
In March 2022, legislators established penalties of between 40 and 45 years in prison for “the creators, organizers, bosses, leaders, financiers or ringleaders.”
Until before this reform, the sentence for gang leaders was 6 to 9 years.
