Category Archives: El Salvador

El Salvador ex-president among 11 to face trial for 1989 murder of Jesuits

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Army killing of six priests, their housekeeper and her daughter was one of civil war’s most notorious crimes

A court in El Salvador has ruled to bring a former president and retired military officials to trial for their alleged roles in the prominent murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter during the country’s civil war 35 years ago.

The former president Alfredo Cristiani, a former congressman and nine retired military officials are charged with murder and acts of terrorism over one of the most notorious crimes committed during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war, which left 75,000 civilians dead and only formally ended in 1992.

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Environmentalists acquitted after contentious murder trial in El Salvador

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Former guerillas were accused of 1989 killing, but supporters say government wants to intimidate activists

Six former guerrillas, whose trial for a civil war-era murder was criticised by fellow environmentalists as politicised, have been acquitted by a court in El Salvador.

Prosecutors had sought up to 36 years in prison for the former rebels of the hard-left Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.

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El Salvador faces scrutiny for ‘political’ trial of five environmental activists

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UN and legal experts have condemned prosecution of anti-mining campaigners over alleged civil war-era killing

Five environmental activists who helped secure a historic mining ban in El Salvador are facing life imprisonment for an alleged civil war-era crime, in a case that has been condemned by UN and legal experts as baseless and politically motivated.

The trial against Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega, who were arrested in January 2023 for the alleged killing of an army informant in 1989, opened on Tuesday in Sensuntepeque, in the department of Cabañas in northern El Salvador.

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Thousands of children swept up in El Salvador mass arrests, rights body says

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Human Rights Watch says ill-treatment of some minors arbitrarily held in gang crackdown amounts to torture

About 3,000 children – including some as young as 12 – have been swept up in El Salvador’s mass detentions since President Nayib Bukele began his crackdown on gangs two years ago, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The report, which draws on case files and almost 100 interviews with victims, police and officials, documents the arbitrary detention of children and ill-treatment that in some cases amounted to torture.

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Rare birds at risk as narco-gangs move into forests to evade capture – report

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Cocaine traffickers have put two-thirds of Central America’s key habitats for threatened birds under threat, study finds

Cocaine consumption is threatening rare tropical birds as narco-traffickers move into some of the planet’s most remote forests to evade drug crackdowns, a study has warned.

Two-thirds of key forest habitats for birds in Central America are at risk of being destroyed by “narco-driven” deforestation, according to the paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Sustainability.

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Nayib Bukele re-elected as El Salvador president in landslide win

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Voters reward Bukele for gang crackdown that has transformed security in central American country

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has won a thumping victory in elections after voters cast aside concerns about erosion of democracy to reward him for a fierce gang crackdown that transformed security in the central American country.

Provisional results on Monday morning showed Bukele winning 83% support with just over 70% of the ballots counted. Bukele declared himself the winner before official results were announced, claiming to have attained more than 85% of the vote.

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Human rights in decline globally as leaders fail to uphold laws, report warns

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Human Rights Watch’s annual report highlights politicians’ double standards and ‘transactional diplomacy’ amid escalating crises

Human rights across the world are in a parlous state as leaders shun their obligations to uphold international law, according to the annual report of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

In its 2024 world report, HRW warns grimly of escalating human rights crises around the globe, with wartime atrocities increasing, suppression of human rights defenders on the rise, and universal human rights principles and laws being attacked and undermined by governments.

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Climate crisis is ‘not gender neutral’: UN calls for more policy focus on women

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Only a third of countries with climate crisis plans include access to sexual, maternal and newborn health services, UNFPA report finds

Only a third of countries include sexual and reproductive health in their national plans to tackle the climate crisis, the UN has warned.

Of the 119 countries that have published plans, only 38 include access to contraception, maternal and newborn health services and just 15 make any reference to violence against women, according to a report published by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and Queen Mary University of London on Tuesday.

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Mexican cartels are fifth-largest employers in the country, study finds

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Organized crime groups have about 175,000 members and authors say the best way to reduce violence is to cut membership

Organised crime groups in Mexico have about 175,000 members – making them the fifth-biggest employer in the country, according to new research published in the journal Science.

Using a decade of data on homicides, missing persons and incarcerations, as well as information about interactions between rival factions, the paper published on Thursday mathematically modeled overall cartel membership, and how levels of violence would respond to a range of policies.

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El Salvador clears way for mass trials as crackdown on gangs ramps up

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Congress passes bill that could allow 900 people to be tried together if they are accused of being in the same criminal group

Nayib Bukele’s government has already locked up 2% of El Salvador’s adult population and built the largest prison in the Americas to house the 70,000 alleged gang members he has imprisoned.

Now the populist leader has cleared the way for mass trials of hundreds of people at a time as he steps up his year-long crackdown on the country’s gangs which critics say is eroding the rule of law and leading to many innocent people being wrongly jailed.

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Salvadoran government accused of doctoring true extent of Covid deaths

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A Salvadoran newspaper reported 15,956 people died from the disease, three times more than President Bukele’s official numbers

Nayib Bukele’s administration in El Salvador has come under fire from rights groups for apparently falsifying Covid-19 figures in an attempt to cover up the true cost of the pandemic.

Two-thirds of the country’s Covid-19 fatalities were left out of official figures in order to give the illusion that the authoritarian government had the pandemic under control, the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica reported on Monday.

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Life imitates art as El Salvador pressures book fair to bar dissenting writer

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Barbers on Strike, author Michelle Recinos’s collection of short stories, has apparently upset strongman president Nayib Bukele

First the soldiers came for those with mohawks. Then they came for the hairdressers themselves.

“They were good kids,” quips the narrator in one of the latest tales by the Salvadorian author Michelle Recinos, “although I’d never trusted them with my hair.”

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At least 153 died in custody in El Salvador’s gang crackdown – report

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Human rights group’s 107-page report details human cost of President Nayib Bukele’s controversial ‘war on gangs’

The human cost of El Salvador’s controversial “war on gangs” has been laid bare in a new report which claims dozens of prisoners were tortured and killed in jail after being caught up in the year-long security crackdown.

The detailed 107-page report from human rights group Cristosal said at least 153 people had died in custody after being arrested as part of President Nayib Bukele’s year long offensive against the Central American country’s notorious “pandillas”.

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At least 12 people dead after crowd crush at football stadium in El Salvador

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  • Incident occurred at the Estadio Cuscatlán in San Salvador
  • President Nayib Bukele pledges ‘thorough investigation’

At least 12 people have died with more than 100 injured in a crowd crush at a football stadium in El Salvador on Saturday, the Central American country’s government has confirmed.

Alianza FC and Club Deportivo Fas were playing the second leg of their playoff quarter-final game at the Estadio Cuscatlán in San Salvador, the country’s capital, when play was suspended after 16 minutes.

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US-Mexico migration deal raises fears for struggling border cities

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Agreement designed to curb increase of people arriving into US marks dramatic precedent for two countries, experts say

An agreement between the United States and Mexico designed to curb the surge of migrants arriving at the US doorstep marks a dramatic new precedent in relations between the two countries, analysts said, warning that the deal could further overwhelm border cities already struggling to cope.

Under the agreement announced in a joint statement on Tuesday, Mexico will continue accepting migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua who are turned away from the US.

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El Salvador news outlet relocates to Costa Rica to avoid Bukele’s crackdown

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El Faro moves its headquarters to avoid ‘fabricated accusations’ after 25 years reporting on drug wars, crime and corruption

El Faro has survived many pressures in its 25 years reporting on El Salvador’s bloody drug wars, crime and institutional corruption.

“We’ve been harassed. We’ve received death threats from drug cartels, requiring us to contract armed security guards. And we’ve had the police coming to our houses after we revealed their corruption scandals,” said Óscar Martínez, editor of the online investigative outlet. “Some of our journalists have been exiled, but we have managed to continue reporting from San Salvador.”

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‘Historic moment’ as El Salvador abortion case fuels hopes for expanded access across Latin America

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Human rights court hears seriously ill woman denied procedure as advocates call for change in region with world’s most restrictive abortion laws

Human rights activists in Latin America hope that a historic court hearing over the case of a Salvadoran woman who was denied an abortion despite her high-risk pregnancy could open the way for El Salvador to decriminalize abortions – and set an important precedent across the region.

The inter-American court of human rights (IACHR) this week considered the historic case of the woman, known as Beatriz, who was prohibited from having an abortion in 2013, even though she was seriously ill and the foetus she was carrying would not have survived outside the uterus.

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El Salvador moves suspected gang members to 40,000-capacity ‘megaprison’

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Around 2,000 inmates transferred on Friday as part of president’s crime crackdown

El Salvador’s government has moved thousands of suspected gang members to a newly opened “megaprison”, the latest step in a controversial crackdown on crime that has caused the Central American nation’s prison population to soar.

“This will be their new home, where they won’t be able to do any more harm to the population,” the president, Nayib Bukele, wrote on Twitter.

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Salvadoran environmental defenders detained for decades-old crimes

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Activists worry the arrests are a move by the cash-strapped government to open the country to now banned metals mining

Five prominent environmental defenders who played a crucial role in securing a historic mining ban in El Salvador have been detained accused of civil war era and gang-related crimes, in what rights groups fear is a ruse to restart mining.

Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega were detained on Wednesday in Cabañas in northern El Salvador, accused of killing an alleged army informant more than 33 years ago during the brutal civil war that claimed 75,000 lives.

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China circles El Salvador’s economy as country edges toward crypto plunge

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President Nayib Bukele bet on bitcoin and its tumbling value has put the Central American country in a financially precarious spot

As crypto-Twitter cascaded with apocalyptic memes about the bankruptcy of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the sharp drop in the bitcoin price, one account has remained notably silent on the topic.

Unlike in previous crashes, the president of El Savlador, Nayib Bukele, who made bitcoin legal tender a year ago, did not exhort his followers to “buy the dip”. The laser eyes, popular among crypto currency traders, have long since been removed from his Twitter profile.

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