Courts in El Salvador began conducting mass trials of imprisoned gang members on Thursday, starting with one processing nearly 500 alleged members of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang.

The trials are part of El Salvador’s ongoing crackdown on gang violence, spearheaded by recently reelected President Nayib Bukele. Thursday saw 492 suspected leaders of MS-13 on trial for over 37,400 crimes allegedly collectively committed by the accused between 2012 and 2022.

The Deputy Director of El Salvador’s Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office Max Muñoz stated on Thursday that 24 “historic leaders” of MS-13 are among the nearly 492 in the trial.

The charges, according to the Salvadoran Attorney General’s Office, include, but are not limited to: 29,416 counts of aggravated homicides, 907 disappearances of persons, and 492 counts of extortions. Other charges include arms, human, and drug trafficking, as well as terrorism.

“The investigations show that each crime committed by each gang member had to be ordered and endorsed by the ringleaders,” the Attorney General’s office wrote on social media.

Each of the 492 accused is facing a minimum sentence of at least 95 years.

“They sowed terror for decades, but they will pay for every life blindsided, for every family torn apart,” Salvadoran Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado wrote on social media.

The courts are expected to issue a sentence on Friday, according to Delgado. At press time, no sentence has been issued.

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In the mean time, security authorities in Ecuador detained more than 6,600 individuals in the first month since the country declared its operation to crush gang violence a formal “internal armed conflict.”

Ecuador, which has been engulfed by out-of-control gang violence in recent years, declared a war on organized crime in January through a decree signed by President Daniel Noboa. The internal conflict decree designated over 20 of Ecuador’s most dangerous criminal gangs targets for the military, rather than the police.

The war declaration is accompanied by a state of exception decree issued in response to a series of terrorist actions that occurred in early January, which included kidnappings, prison riots, and the detonation of explosive devices against civilian and police vehicles. On January 9, a group of armed assailants stormed the local news network TC Television and kidnapped the channel’s staff, placing makeshift explosive devices in journalists’ pockets.

Source: Breitbart