Arrest of Salvadoran Judge Ordered in Drug-Corruption Case

Salvadoran authorities have ordered the arrest of Luis Arturo Ventura, a judge implicated in this country’s most publicized drug-corruption scandal, according to a fellow judge who issued the warrant.

Ventura is accused of malfeasance for dismissing charges against four alleged drug traffickers whom police caught on a deserted airstrip with $14-million worth of cocaine three years ago.

The case has become a lightning rod for demands that El Salvador clean up its notoriously corrupt courts. Bribery has been the unspoken accusation as the case has developed, although no evidence of payoffs has ever been made public.

“This is a lesson to all judges, including me, to be more prudent in our decisions and to follow the law,” Judge Elsy Aviles said Thursday. She quietly issued the warrant for Ventura’s arrest late Tuesday in the port city of La Libertad, 19 miles south of the capital.

Dozens of Salvadoran judges have been fired for corruption or incompetence in recent months, but public pressure is growing for the government to prosecute crooked judges, not just remove them. Ventura is often cited as an example of why punishment is necessary.

“This is a model of how the Salvadoran justice system does not work,” said Rodolfo Cardenal, vice rector at the University of Central America, which has conducted extensive research on the Salvadoran courts and criminal investigations.

Ventura was the fourth judge to be assigned the case against the alleged cocaine traffickers, after it bounced from one court to another for 18 months. Two judges declared the matter outside their jurisdiction, and a third was promoted and changed courts after hearing only part of the case. Ventura received the case in September 1994. He dismissed the charges within weeks, saying police had failed to provide the suspected drug dealers with a lawyer.

Their release from jail provoked a public outcry that became even louder when the judge’s decision was not appealed by the two local prosecutors.

The judge and the two prosecutors were fired, and an investigation into their actions was begun a year ago. Earlier this month, the attorney general asked that they be arrested. Aviles said there was not enough evidence against the prosecutors to arrest them.

Aviles said the court does not know whether Ventura is still in El Salvador.