The sweeping re-election of President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador last Sunday was officially announced on Friday, the same day that courts ordered the continued detention of gang leaders after a major trial and extended the state of emergency in that country. 'Central America.
The young 42-year-old head of state, known for his fight against crime, received more than 82% of the votes with a turnout rate of over 52%, the head of the Electoral Court, Dora Martinez, announced on Friday the number of all polling stations.
FMLN candidate, Marxist guerrilla heir Manuel Flores, came in second with 6.25% of the vote, Ms. Martinez added. Joel Sanchez of the right-wing Arena Party had 5.44%, according to the final count.
Nayib Bukele's victory in the 2019 presidential election ended three decades of power transfers between the FMLN and Arena, the two largest parties since the end of the civil war in 1992.
After the final vote count, Mr. Bukele, celebrated for his fight against gangs, thanked the “Salvadorian people” for their support in a message on social network X.
A court had previously ordered the continued pre-trial detention of 403 leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang until 2025.
“The evidence presented proves the connection of all these executives with the structure of the MS, which is why the court ordered that they all remain in custody until 2025,” the Attorney General’s Office said on the social network.
According to prosecutors, these MS-13 leaders are linked to 37,402 crimes committed between 2012 and 2022, including “29,416 aggravated homicides.”
The minimum sentence imposed “runs up to 95 years” as the hearing presented “ample evidence” of the crimes they are accused of, the same source said.
State of emergency extended until March 11th
The San Salvador Organized Crime Court, which conducted this virtual hearing for inmates in a dozen prisons, also ordered the arrest of 89 other fugitive MS-13 leaders facing the same charges.
A total of 492 people are affected by this case. These include 24 senior managers, 215 middle managers and 253 regional managers.
Also on Friday, the Salvadoran parliament, where Mr. Bukele's party, Nuevas Ideas, holds the majority, agreed to a new extension of the state of emergency until March 11, allowing arrests without warrants and the use of the army.
Mr. Bukele particularly relied on this state of emergency to launch the “war on gangs,” which brought him great popularity.
For nearly two years, nearly 76,000 suspects have been arrested, most of them members of Maras MS-13 and Barrio 18. About 7,000 people wrongfully arrested have been released.
Concern about the concentration of power and the fate of prisoners does not seem to be top of mind for most Salvadorans, who carry painful memories of Mara rule, extortion and violence.
In this regard, the family of a former national security adviser to Mr. Bukele, who died in hospital on Wednesday while detained on espionage charges, also demanded an explanation for his death on Friday, pointing out that his body showed signs of alleged espionage “Torture”.
“The body has several bruises, several evidences that he was tortured in one way or another,” Lucrecia Landaverde, lawyer for the family of the deceased, Alejandro Muyshondt, told local media.
Mr Muyshondt's mother told the press, without naming names, that her son had been “silenced” and subjected to “humiliation” in the style of “Klaus Barbie”, a German agent of the Nazi regime who committed crimes in the World War committed against humanity II.