A court in El Salvador sentenced a Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang member to 1,310 years in prison for various crimes, the attorney general, Rodolfo Delgado, reported on his social media this Tuesday (03.07.2023).
This is Wilmer Segovia, from the Shulton cell, who “has been found guilty of having committed 33 homicides, 9 propositions to commit murder and several extortions,” according to Delgado.
“The gang members who have caused so much pain and tears to the Salvadoran people are not going to come out. They will remain locked up until they pay for each of their crimes. We will take care of that,” he stressed on Twitter. He added that Miguel Ángel Portillo, from the aforementioned cell of the MS-13, was sentenced to 945 years in prison for “22 homicides, 4 propositions to commit murder, an attempted homicide and extortion.”
The Salvadoran prosecutor did not give details of the date of capture of the detainees or if they were captured within the framework of the emergency regime, which suspends constitutional guarantees, in force since March 2022. Nor did he explain if they were sentenced under the penal reforms approved in the Assembly Legislature under said regime.
At the end of March 2022, the Congress of El Salvador approved a harsher sentence against gang members in response to the wave of homicides that the country experienced at that time.
Gangs, a phenomenon considered a legacy of the civil war (1980-1992) and which was strengthened with the deportation of gang members from the United States, have resisted the security plans implemented in the last four Administrations and have generated spikes of violence throughout through the years.
