El Salvador Perspectives

2015 has been a year in which anti-corruption efforts made significant progress in Guatemala.   The battle against corruption was waged by CICIG -- the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala.   A massive scandal involving the customs system in Guatemala has been exposed and prosecuted.  The CICIG obtained indictments of high government officials, the resignation and arrest of the president, and a strengthened civil society. But what about El Salvador? In Transparency International's 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index , El Salvador had a score of 39, on a 100 point scale where 0 is the worst and 100 is the best.  With that score, El Salvador ranked 80th out of 175 countries. The most recent Human Rights Report from the US State Department regarding El Salvador states: The law provides criminal penalties for corruption by officials; however, the government did not implement the law effectively, and officials often engaged in corrupt practices ...

The trial for the murder of Salvadoran politicians in Guatemala in 2007 came to a conclusion last week.   But the conviction of several suspects raises as many questions as it answers.   An article in ContraPunto with the headline " Obscurity and Doubt Hang Over the Case " captures the state of information about the case. Long time readers of this blog will remember the assassination of three Salvadoran members of the Central American parliament while they traveled in Guatemala in February 2007. The bodies of these three politicians and their driver were found in the burned out remains of the SUV they had been driving.  One of the victims was Eduardo D'Aubuisson, the son of the founder of the ARENA party, the late Maj. Roberto D'Aubuisson.  The initial investigation by authorities in Guatemala quickly arrested members of the organized crime division of Guatemala's national police. But in a brazen raid , unknown persons managed to penetrate Guatemala's high ...

[This is a corrected version of my earlier blog post on this topic] A story of corruption, drug-trafficking, bribery, international relations, murder and suicide is unfolding in El Salvador and the United States. Carlos Roberto Silva Pereira was a fugitive from justice in El Salvador when he was arrested in southern California in October 2007. He had fled El Salvador where he faces corruption and money-laundering charges. Silva has been held by US authorities since that time and has not yet been extradited back to El Salvador. He has also allegedly been linked by Guatemalan authorities to the murder of three Salvadoran deputies to the Central American Parliament and their driver in February 2007. A US immigration court has now apparently granted the political asyluym request of Silva who asserted that his prosecution in El Salvador was politically motivated. According to Inside Costa Rica : Several Salvadorean sectors rejected on Friday the US [immigration court] decision to grant...

Manuel Castillo, the alleged "intellectual author" of the murder in February 2007 of 3 Salvadoran deputies to the Central American parliament as well as their driver, has been arrested .  The 2007 murders in Guatemala have been tied to narcotics trafficking.  Castillo had been identified months ago for his role in the murders.   He was a deputy in the Guatemalan legislature and the elected mayor of the Guatemalan town of Jutiapa in a region police say is dominated by drug smugglers. Although the supposed mastermind of the murders has been arrested, and much is known about how the murder took place, there are still many unanswered questions about the link between the Salvadoran politicians and the Guatemalan  criminal ring which wanted them dead.  The answers to those questions, if the answers ever come, will shed light on how pervasive the corrupting influence of drug money has become in El Salvador.   

This post is an update on what is known about the the assassination of three Salvadoran members of the Central American parliament while they traveled in Guatemala in February 2007. The initial investigation by authorities in Guatemala quickly arrested members of the organized crime division of Guatemala's national police. But in a brazen raid , unknown persons managed to penetrate Guatemala's high security prison and execute the suspects in their cells. Since that time, the most promising leads have apparently been cellular telephone logs of calls to and from the now dead killers. This past August, press reports in El Salvador and Guatemala indicated that one person implicated as making calls with the killers around the time of the murders is Guatemalan mayor and legislator Manuel Castillo. According to those same reports, Castillo has been implicated for a number of years in narco-trafficking in the region. The same reports indicated that another person, given the name...

The masterminds and their motives behind the February slayings of Salvadoran legislators in Guatemala remain largely a mystery. According to a recent Los Angeles Times story , Guatemala's government has shown a lack of will to pursue the investigation and what it might uncover: GUATEMALA CITY — The investigation into the February killings of three Salvadoran legislators here has stumbled because of obstacles and poor police work, observers say, leaving them to doubt whether authorities will uncover the masterminds of a crime that shook Central America's political establishment. Eduardo Jose D'Aubuisson, the 32-year-old son of the founder of El Salvador's ruling party, was kidnapped, tortured and killed along with two fellow legislators and their driver while on their way to a meeting of the Central American Parliament, a regional lawmaking body. Guatemalan officials say the principal suspects are local drug traffickers and mid-level rogue police officers. But a U.S. ...

The murder of the Salvadoran deputies to the Central American parliament in Guatemala last February remain unresolved. After the original arrests of senior Guatemalan police officers (who were subsequently killed inside a supposedly secure prison), Guatemalan authorities have provided neither a motive nor the persons behind the crime. According to published reports , El Salvador's president is expressing concern with the slow pace of the investigation: SAN SALVADOR, June 18 (Reuters) - Salvadoran President Tony Saca complained on Monday about neighboring Guatemala's lack of progress in solving the murders of three Salvadoran politicians in Guatemala in February.... Four months on, Guatemala has arrested a police officer and five other people linked to a drug cartel based near the border with El Salvador and is investigating them, but detectives have not established a motive for the murders. Saca said he would speak to Guatemalan President Oscar Berger about the issue when t...

Guatemalan authorities have arrested four persons whom they say are drug traffickers, linked to the killings of three Salvadoran politicians and their driver in Guatemala a month ago. From the Associated Press : Four people tied to drug trafficking were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of being among those who orchestrated the killings of three Salvadoran politicians and their driver, Guatemala's interior minister said. Carlos Vielman said the four suspects ordered corrupt police officers to kidnap the lawmakers in February and bring them to an isolated, rural area outside of Guatemala City. Four police officers arrested in the case were later killed in jail. Another officer is still in custody, and a sixth is at large. Vielman said the four new suspects - three men and one woman whom he called drug traffickers - helped police search the parliamentarians' car for drugs and bought gasoline used to torch the vehicle and burn the four bodies. "They were the ones that took apart...

What Salvadoran bloggers are saying: Recent events involving the murder of four Salvadorans in Guatemala have dominated the blogosphere in El Salvador. On February 19, three members of the Central American parliament (PARLACEN) from El Salvador's ruling ARENA party were found murdered in Guatemala along with their driver. The group had been traveling to a working group meeting of PARLACEN. The bodies were found in a rural area outside of Guatemala City, in the burned out shell of the vehicle in which they had been driving. Among the dead was Eduardo D'Aubuisson, son of the founder of ARENA. Initially the reaction in the Salvadoran blogosphere was to call for restraint [ES], avoiding a rush to judgment, and calling for an in depth investigation [ES]. Jjmar wrote that no one should seek to take advantage of the murders [ES] for political gain, whether to further the political polarization in El Salvador or to gain a benefit in the 2009 election campaign. Fears of a political mot...

Another twist in the case of last week's murders in Guatemala. On Sunday, the four Guatemalan police officers arrested for the assassinations were found murdered in their jail cells according to press reports . It would appear that very powerful forces did not want them to do any talking.

Four Guatemalan police officers have been arrested in connection with the assassination of three Salvadoran members of the Central American parliament, according to stories in the AP and elsewhere. According to news reports, the police officers all worked in the anti-gang unit of the Guatemalan national police. El Diario indicates that one of those arrested was the head of the anti-gang unit. The same El Diario story says that GPS devices, installed on Guatemalan police vehicles, provided evidence leading to the arrests. Reports are linking the killings to organized crime in the region. UPDATE: Read Raul Guttierez' analysis on IPS regarding the killings and their possible links to organized crime and police corruption in the region.

More information is available on the assassination of three Salvadoran members of the Central American parliament while they traveled in Guatemala. All three were members of El Salvador's ruling ARENA party, including Eduardo D'Aubuisson, one of the sons of Roberto D'Aubuisson, the party's founder. 1. At least two of the victims were killed with a single shot to the head, execution style. The car they were traveling in was riddled with bullet holes and completely destroyed by fire. The car was found on a remote back road, away from the main highway. More details can be found in this AP report 2. Statements from the Presidents of Guatemala and El Salvador pointed to potential dark motives: It wasn't coincidental," the Guatemalan president, Óscar Berger, told reporters. "We have various theories, and we aren't ruling out the possibility that it was a political crime." The Salvadoran president, Tony Saca, decried the killing at a cemetery cerem...

Three members of the Central American parliament (PARLACEN) from El Salvador's ARENA party were found murdered last night in Guatemala along with their driver. The group was traveling to a working group meeting of PARLACEN. Gunmen apparently attacked the SUV in which they were driving; the bodies were found in the burned out shell of the vehicle. Among the dead is Eduardo D'Aubuisson, son of the founder of ARENA. There is no known motive for the crime. You can read the news reports from Reuters , the BBC or El Faro .