El Salvador’s former prison director put behind bars for truce with gangs
The former director of El Salvador’s penitentiaries, Nelson Rauda, was sent to prison on Tuesday for allegedly forming part of a network that authorized privileges and perks for imprisoned gang members during a truce with those groups from 20122014.
Rauda, who had been a fugitive since early May when authorities arrested 18 people, including top police, military and prison officials and truce mediator Raul Mijango was arrested on Monday in the northwestern province of Santa Ana.
The officials are accused of belonging to illicit groups, trafficking in prohibited objects within the prisons, arbitrary acts, failing to carry out official duties and other crimes.
In midMay, a judge with the Specialized Court in San Salvador decreed that Rauda should be placed in preventive custody in prison, and ratified the arrest order issued by the Attorney General’s Office.
Manuel Chacon, an attorney and former prisons chief, told reporters on Tuesday that “a week ago” he appealed the ruling and asked that Rauda be conditionally released while the judicial investigation is under way.
Upon leaving the court, the former official, who was transferred amid a heavy police presence, said that he is “innocent” and that he is confident in “the justice system and the work of my attorneys.”
According to prosecutor Douglas Melendez, during the truce “public officials and employees took advantage of their posts to commit assorted crimes ... (and) corruption occurred as a result of these negotiations with criminals by breaking the prison system’s legality.”
In March 2012, the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS13, and Barrio 18 gangs made a pact for a cessation of hostilities among their members that was agreed to and “gone along with” by former President Mauricio Funes last February.
Funes, who was summoned by the AG’s Office to testify regarding the truce, said that “insofar as (the truce) produced concrete results, such as the reduction in murders, the government went along with it.”