El Salvador’s President Najib Boukele announced today that more than 15,000 alleged gang members had been arrested in the country in less than a month, during law enforcement raids against these criminal organizations.
“More than 15,000 terrorists were arrested in just 27 days. “We are continuing our war against the gangs,” Boukele wrote in a tweet.
According to the latest official data, the police arrested 484 members of criminal gangs yesterday, with the total number of those arrested amounting to 15,055 after the start of a “war against the gangs”.
This number of arrests is unprecedented for thirty years in the Central American country, with a population of 6.5 million.
The criminal groups, most notably La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18, number about 70,000 members, according to authorities.
In March, 16,000 of them were jailed, but with the latest arrests, that number has skyrocketed to more than 31,000 inmates.
“91% of the people of El Salvador support the war against the gangs started by our government,” Najib Boukele said, citing a poll released yesterday by the CID Gallup Institute.
The government’s operation against the gangs began after an “explosion” in homicides, with 87 dead in two days in late March, murders for which the authorities blame the criminal organizations.
However, human rights groups have denounced the arrest of people not affiliated with the gangs.
In fact, on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, during a visit to Panama, called on Boukele to respect human rights in his fight against gangs.
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