A judge sentenced former El Salvador President Mauricio Funes to 14 years in prison Monday for negotiating with gangs during his administration.
Funes’ trial began in April with the former leader living in Nicaragua. El Salvador changed its laws last year to allow trials in absentia.
Prosecutors had accused Funes of illicit association and failure to perform his duties for the gang truce negotiated in 2012. Funes had denied negotiating with the gangs or giving their leaders any privileges.
Funes’ former Security Minister Gen. David MunguĂa Payes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his involvement in the negotiations.
Funes’ sentence was the sum of eight years for illicit association and six years for failure to perform duties.
Prosecutors say the gang negotiations were aimed at getting the country’s powerful street gangs to lower the homicide rate in exchange for benefits to the gangs’ imprisoned leaders.
El Salvador has pursued Funes, 64, who governed from 2009 to 2014, for other alleged crimes in at least a half dozen cases.
In 2015, El Salvador’s Supreme Court ruled that the gangs are terrorist organizations.
Current President Nayib Bukele has been accused of engaging in the same kind of negotiations with the gangs.
In December 2021, the U.S. Treasury said that Bukele’s government secretly negotiated a truce with leaders of the country’s powerful street gangs. Imprisoned gang leaders were allegedly given privileges in exchange for slowing down killings and for giving political support to Bukele’s party. Local news site El Faro had previously reported negotiations.
Former Attorney General Raúl Melara had said at the time that he would investigate the allegations, but when Bukele’s party dominated mid-term elections and took control of Congress, the new lawmakers ousted Melara.
The truce apparently broke down when the gangs killed 62 people in a single day in March 2022. Bukele responded by suspending some fundamental rights and waging an all-out war against the gangs that carries on today.