A court in El Salvador sentences a leader of the Mara Salvatrucha to 634 years in prison

Amadeo Yovany Hernández Perla, alias ‘Grillo’, in archive images. COURTESY

Salvadoran justice, which responds to the orders of President Nayib Bukele, has begun to sentence members of the violent gangs that have bled El Salvador dry for decades. The Judicial Branch announced on Tuesday that it imposed a sentence of 634 years in prison against a leader of the Mara Salvatrucha that operated in the eastern part of the country, whom it accuses of having participated in 23 “aggravated homicides”, with which the authorities want to show inflexible in the face of the crimes committed by the gang members, against whom the government has launched a brutal manhunt.

The Judicial Branch has reported on social networks that “Amadeo Yovany Hernández Perla, alias Grillo, leader of the Mara Salvatrucha was sentenced to 634 years in prison for being directly related to the commission of 23 aggravated homicides, two cases of proposition and conspiracy to commit the crime of aggravated homicide, terrorist organizations, as well as aggravated extortion, aggravated robbery, theft and attempted homicide”. The institution has ensured that “the assessment and conviction of the events that occurred between 2011 and 2017 in different municipalities in the area was carried out by the Second Court -B- Against Organized Crime of San Miguel”, an important province of the eastern region from the small Central American country.

#JusticiaSV ⚖️ | It’s time for you 𝗼 𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗰𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗱𝗼 𝗮 𝘃𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗶𝗼𝘀

💬 Press ALT on the photo to read the note. pic.twitter.com/x9la07kMxQ

– Judicial Centers of El Salvador (@JuzgadosSV) August 15, 2023

Human rights organizations have criticized the sentence. Abraham Abrego, director of strategic litigation at Cristosal, an organization that ensures respect for human rights in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, explained to this newspaper that “Article 27 of the Constitution prohibits life sentences. The time of the 634-year sentence makes it perpetual, since there is no possibility of fulfilling the resocializing purpose of the sentence, nor the security of accessing the review and reduction of the sentence through legal resources. In short, the violent condemnation of the Salvadoran Constitution”.

Bukele, who congratulates himself on Twitter (now X) for the achievements of Salvadoran justice in its war against the so-called maras, has not yet ruled on this case, but he shared a video of Gustavo Villatoro, Minister of Justice, on the social network and Public Safety, which shows the capture of an alleged criminal hiding in a hole in a building. “We are going to look for them even under the stones, no matter where they hide, we will find them. We have highly trained Police in intelligence and territory work to locate and capture these cowardly rats, whose hiding places are clearly running out”, Villatoro said.

The official has reported that the Police detained in the province of Santa Ana, in the west of the country, Carlos Alfredo Alvarenga Medina, alias “Duke”, “Muerte” or “Caliche”, also a member of the Mara Salvatrucha and who was hiding in a hole inside a wall. “Now, he will be prosecuted for the crime of illegal groups and terrorist organizations. We continue to win this war against the gangs and we are not going to stop until we finish with the last remnant,” Villatoro stated.

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Bukele does not give up on his so-called war against gangs. The controversial president announced at the beginning of August an operation in his war against the gangs, which includes a military siege in an area in the center of the country to prevent gang members from moving freely and to break their supply chains. The new offensive includes the mobilization starting this morning of 7,000 soldiers and 1,000 heavily armed police officers. Bukele has said that the siege “will be maintained as long as the operatives can extract all the gang members.”

The 634-year sentence against the leader of the Mara Salvatrucha occurs in a context of strong institutional deterioration. The president, who controls Congress and the courts and is running for re-election, has achieved a reform that allows him to carry out massive trials, with hearings of up to 900 prisoners. “Anyone can be arbitrarily captured,” Abrego, from Cristosal, told this newspaper in August. “We have found in the complaints received that day laborers, unionists, fishermen, farmers, people who have questioned the police have been arrested. There are trade unionists captured for protesting because they have not been paid their salaries and more than 3,000 informal vendors have been evicted from San Salvador, the capital, and threatened with capture under the emergency regime if they protest”, explained the activist.

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