Bukele closes with 7,000 soldiers and 1,000 police officers an apartment in El Salvador in search of gang members
The department of Cabañas, in El Salvador, woke up this Tuesday surrounded by 7,000 soldiers and 1,000 police officers who have fenced off the entrances and exits to “prevent gang members from leaving and cut off all supply lines of terrorist groups.”. This was reported on his social networks by the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, who explained that in recent weeks and as a result of his 'war' against gangs, Cabañas, located 75 kilometers from the capital, “has become the place with the largest number of terrorist cells, who have come there looking for their rural areas to hide”.
For this reason, the president has warned that the military and police siege will continue as long as the operatives “can extract all the gang members”, although he has indicated that visitors and tourists in this department can be “calm and carry out their activities normally”.. Bukele has remarked that this massive fence “guarantees the security of the area even more” and has insisted that “we will not lift it until we find all the criminals”.
The president has accompanied his message with several photos in which hundreds of soldiers and police officers lined up and heavily armed are seen patrolling through the forest and urban areas.. This great deployment occurs after last Sunday, two agents of the National Civil Police were injured in the Maquilishuat canton, of Ilobasco, in a supposed ambush with an armed group. The Police itself was in charge of reporting the attack: “two of our agents were injured after an illegitimate attack committed by terrorists in Ilobasco, Cabañas”. This caused a strong device to be deployed to find the whereabouts of the attackers, while the Minister of National Defense, René Merino, reported that the two injured agents were taken by helicopter to San Salvador to receive medical attention..
The military and police siege is part of phase five of the Territorial Control Plan, which Bukele launched on November 23, 2022 and whose objective is to “extract the plague” of gang members in the large cities of the Central American country.. Thus, he accuses these groups of being part of “international terrorist organizations”, in reference to the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, which have 70,000 members, according to government estimates.. Specifically, the president has called this fifth phase “Extraction” in which a total of 14,000 troops participate.
Since it was implemented, it is the fifth siege that has been carried out, after the deployment of 5,500 soldiers and policemen in Nueva Concepción, Chalatenango last May, after the murder of a policeman by alleged gang members. The first test of the fifth phase of the Territorial Control Plan was on October 2, 2022 when a military fence was installed in Comasagua, after a 36-year-old man was murdered the day before in this municipality of 14,000 inhabitants located 100 kilometers from the capital. Police and military searched, interrogated, and searched for tattoos alluding to gangs.
Ten days later, a fence was established in Soyapango, where 8,500 soldiers and 1,500 police officers participated.. On December 24 of last year, Bukele also surrounded the Tutunichapa community, in San Salvador, with 1,000 soldiers and 130 police officers, while that same day he extended this measure to the La Granjita community, also in the country's capital, with 1,000 soldiers. and 100 agents.
One of the alleged gang members, frisked. Government of El Salvador / EFE
Since he began his term in June 2019, the Salvadoran president launched the aforementioned Territorial Control Plan, which resulted in a militarization of the streets, especially from phase four, which consisted of an “incursion into the territories”. Since then, more than 71,000 people have been detained after the constitutional guarantees of freedom of association and assembly, right to defense, term of administrative detention and inviolability of correspondence and telecommunications were suspended..
In this context, Bukele implemented the military sieges by acknowledging that “there are still few gang members in the cities and in the countryside and we have to go and extract them” to prevent criminals from fleeing to the mountains or to other communities or cities.. In this sense, he defends that “practically, they have to stay inside waiting for us to go for them”. The day this measure was implemented, he already warned that “we are not going to give them the chance to escape because the military will have them surrounded and, if someone wants to supply them with weapons, ammunition, food, telephones or everything they use to intimidate the population, there they will intercept both the criminals and those who collaborate with them to put them under the authority's order and be prosecuted”.
SUMMARY TRIALS AND INCREASED PENALTIES
All these repressive measures have been accompanied by judicial reforms in the Legislative Assembly, where Bukele's party, Nuevas Ideas, has had a majority since May 1, 2021.. The last great package of legislative modifications was approved last Wednesday by the Assembly, with the votes of 67 of the 84 parliamentarians, so that summary trials can be held in El Salvador in groups of up to 900 people..
Thus, those who are arrested within the framework of the Exception Regime, may be grouped into one of the gang groups or cells to be subjected to a single criminal process.. With this measure, as defended by the decree sent by the Salvadoran government, “it seeks to make it easier for judges to pass sentence on criminals more quickly and prevent members of these criminal structures from being released.”.
For their part, human rights organizations have already warned of the risk of not individualizing judicial cases, since innocent people who are not related to gangs could be sentenced.. These entities estimate at least 5,490 “direct victims” of human rights violations under the emergency regime.
Another of the reforms approved in the Assembly establishes that those who are detained during this regime may remain in prison for up to 24 months before the Prosecutor's Office takes them to trial or decides their release, while prison sentences have also been increased to 60 years. for gang leaders or ringleaders, compared to the current 45.