Middle Boss Gangster Sentenced to 694 Years... A Country That Halved Its Murder Rate

El Salvador Court Sentences Notorious Gang to Prison
Sentence About 600 Years... Government Supports 'Gang Eradication'
Homicide Rate Halved Since President Bukele Took Office

El Salvador's court sentenced notorious gang members to more than 600 years in prison. The El Salvador government is implementing unprecedentedly strict security policies to eradicate gangs.

According to local media such as El Diario El Salvador on the 16th (local time), the El Salvador court sentenced five gang members belonging to 'Mara Salvatrucha' to 500 to 600 years in prison on the previous day (15th) on multiple charges including murder, attempted murder, robbery, and extortion.

According to the detailed sentences released on the official social media account of the El Salvador Prosecutor's Office, Amadeo Hernandez Perla (alias 'Griyo'), a mid-level boss of the organization, was sentenced to 694 years in prison. Jose Ramon Claros Ramos (alias 'Joker') received 514 years, and the other three were sentenced to 192 years, 264 years, and 514 years respectively.

They are known to have been involved in 67 murders, 8 attempted murders, 6 robberies, 4 cases of extortion and seizure, and 2 thefts between 2011 and 2017. The gang Mara Salvatrucha, to which they belong, was originally notorious for brutal violent acts.

Suspected members of a violent organization are detained at Ciudad Barrios Prison in Salvador.
[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

They were formed mainly by immigrants who moved to Los Angeles (LA), USA, in the 1980s, and their main area of activity is North and Central America, including the United States.

Local media interpret the court's ruling as aligned with the El Salvador government's 'war on crime.' Earlier, in March last year, the El Salvador government declared a state of emergency and began implementing high-intensity security policies.

The state of emergency has continued for over a year, and the El Salvador government has mobilized soldiers and police on a large scale to thoroughly search even rural villages to arrest suspects, deploying massive administrative power to eradicate criminals.

The number of suspects arrested so far has reached 70,000, and as the number of inmates increased causing a shortage of detention facilities, construction of a large-scale prison capable of housing 40,000 criminals has also begun.

El Salvador once suffered from a murder rate problem so severe that it earned the stigma of being 'the most dangerous country in the world.' However, the situation reversed when current President Nayib Bukele, who pledged to eradicate gangs, took office. The murder rate, which was 17.6 per 100,000 people in 2021, dropped by more than half to 7.8 per 100,000 last year, a level similar to Canada and the United States.

However, due to unprecedented enforcement of public authority, international human rights organizations have criticized it as 'human rights repression.' According to a report by The New York Times (NYT), more than 5,000 people unrelated to gangs were imprisoned and later released in El Salvador.

Nevertheless, local citizens, exhausted by gang crimes, firmly support President Bukele. As of the end of last year, President Bukele's approval rating was recorded at 91%.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.