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Security & Strategic Review - September 2015 (ISSN 1741-4202)

EL SALVADOR: Gangs escalate violence, police multiply engagements

The Salvadorean street gangs have responded to the government’s decision to start trying them as terrorists [SSR-15-08] with a sharp increase in homicides, to which the national police (PNC) responded with an escalation of confrontations with the maras. The government has interpreted this as another attempt by the gangs to force the authorities to reverse their policy of confining their leaders to maximum security prisons. One feature in the new wave of violence was a string of attacks with explosives that have been attributed to the maras.

PNC director Mauricio Ramírez Landaverde reported on 1 September that there had been 907 homicides across the country in August, just over twice as many than in July and 162% more than in August 2014. This has taken the total since the beginning of the year to 4,198, or 7.2% more than in the whole of 2014. ‘The situation in August,’ said Ramírez, ‘indicates that the criminal groups have launched a new attempt to impose upon the state the adoption of some measures that favour them,’ an allusion to the reversal of the new confinement régime for their leaders.

Government spokesman Eugenio Chicas said that 85% of the August homicide victims were members of maras. ‘This situation,’ he said, ‘will be maintained for as long as these criminal groups are engaged in their processes of internal purges and dispute the distribution of drugs and control of territories to extort money from the population.’

According to data provided by the PNC’s information analysis unit (UCATI) to the Spanish news agency Efe, 197 gang members were killed in confrontations with the police in the first eight months of the year ― 265% more than in the same period last year and 134% more than in the whole of last year. This largely reflects the fact that the number of occasions on which the police engaged gang members had also increased, to 423 or 171% more than in the same period of 2014 and 75% more than in the whole of that year.

On 28 September the PNC raided a party in Apopa, a municipality 12 kilometres north of San Salvador, and arrested 231 suspected gang members. Prosecutor-general Luis Martínez told the media that they would be charged with inciting acts of terrorism and illicit association. Justice & security minister Benito Lara said that among those arrested were four leaders of a gang (which he did not identify). An unofficial report said that at least 15 had been released when it was discovered that they were not gang members.

Bombs

On 29 August the defence minister, General David Munguía Payés, announced that a device containing C-4 and shards of glass had been found in a car parked close to the justice & security ministry. He said the device had failed to explode because of improper handling. On 6 September a plastic-wrapped shoebox containing a device with a charge of potassium chlorate and shrapnel was found close to a police station in Panchimalco, a municipality 6km south of the capital. It was preventively detonated by the PNC’s explosives unit. Four days later device with a charge of potassium chlorate and sodium benzoate was found in a car parked in front of the finance ministry. It too was detonated by the police.

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