SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — A decide sentenced former El Salvador President Mauricio Funes to 14 years in jail Monday for negotiating with gangs throughout his administration.

Funes’ trial started in April with the previous chief dwelling in Nicaragua. El Salvador modified its legal guidelines final 12 months to permit trials in absentia.

Prosecutors had accused Funes of illicit affiliation and failure to carry out his duties for the gang truce negotiated in 2012. Funes had denied negotiating with the gangs or giving their leaders any privileges.

Funes’ former Security Minister Gen. David Munguía Payes was sentenced to 18 years in jail for his involvement within the negotiations.

Munguía Payes mentioned after the sentencing that the trial was stuffed with irregularities.

“I consider myself a political prisoner, for only having served as the ex-minister of President Funes. They accuse me of a series of accusations that have no foundation,” he mentioned.

Funes’ sentence was the sum of eight years for illicit affiliation and 6 years for failure to carry out duties.

Funes is the second former Salvadoran president sentenced to jail for criminal activity throughout his administration. In 2018, former President Tony Saca was sentenced to 10 years in jail after pleading responsible to diverting greater than $300 million in state funds. He was Funes’ predecessor, governing from 2004 to 2009.

Prosecutors say the gang negotiations have been aimed toward getting the nation’s highly effective road gangs to decrease the murder charge in trade for advantages to the gangs’ imprisoned leaders.

El Salvador has pursued Funes, 64, who ruled from 2009 to 2014, for different alleged crimes in no less than a half dozen instances. Nicaragua gave him citizenship in 2019.

In 2015, El Salvador’s Supreme Court dominated that the gangs are terrorist organizations.

Current President Nayib Bukele has been accused of participating in the identical sort of negotiations with the gangs.

In December 2021, the U.S. Treasury mentioned that Bukele’s authorities secretly negotiated a truce with leaders of the nation’s highly effective road gangs. Imprisoned gang leaders have been allegedly given privileges in trade for slowing down killings and for giving political assist to Bukele’s occasion. Local information website El Faro had beforehand reported negotiations.

Former Attorney General Raúl Melara had mentioned on the time that he would examine the allegations, however when Bukele’s occasion dominated mid-term elections and took management of Congress, the brand new lawmakers ousted Melara.

The truce apparently broke down when the gangs killed 62 individuals in a single day in March 2022. Bukele responded by suspending some basic rights and waging an all-out battle towards the gangs that carries on right now.

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