US Funds Salvadoran Paramilitaries Engaging in Human Rights Abuses

By teleSUR

31 May 18

U.S. officials are funding a special police force in El Salvador whose reputation for extrajudicial killings is worse than that of the gangs they are supposed to be fighting.

he U.S. government has been paying El Salvador's national police to assassinate supposed gang members, according to a new CNN investigation.

Since 2003, when the Central American government began its 'La Mano Dura' – a set of tough policies targeting organized crime – successive U.S. administrations have channeled millions of dollars into Salvadoran security forces to combat gang violence and extortion.

Such funding may be nothing new, but what is new is that next month the United Nations will bring a case against a special Salvadoran police force, known as the Jaguars, for exhibiting "a pattern of behavior by security personnel amounting to extrajudicial executions."

The Jaguars' predecessor – the Special Reaction Forces (FES) – was shut down when a female officer was forcibly disappeared.

According to CNN, the U.N. will demand that the Salvadoran government break a "cycle of impunity" against special security forces whose members killed at least 43 people in El Salvador in the first six months of 2017.

While the prosecutor's office is trying to investigate the killings, the UN said 92 percent of investigations against these special forces – which are largely funded by the United States – are dismissed in the first 72 hours. What's more is that the paramilitary groups are apparently carrying out preemptive executions of alleged gang members.

For example, in May of 2017 members of the FES got permission from a commanding officer to 'crash' – or kill – a gang member. In another instance, FES officers communicating on Whatsapp said another FES officer had acted carelessly because there were witnesses to one of his murders.

Members of the notorious MS-13 gang – the same Central Americans that U.S. President Trump last week branded "animals" – now say they are being 'exterminated' and are ready for mediated peace talks. 

"There's a general belief about this unit having a green light to kill these gang members, but that’s a lie," Jaguar Commander Cesar Ortega told CNN.

"We stick to the legal norms of our country. We can only respond against an aggression; we use the force levels that apply to all police corps. And, as a last resort, we fire our weapons."

Ortega said FES officers receive training from U.S. agencies – the DEA and FBI among them – as well as equipment, such as Kevlar bulletproof vests: "The only thing that the U.S. government does not supply is lethal equipment, the weapons and the ammunition." The Salvadoran government says it buys weapons and ammunition from U.S. munitions producers.  

A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador admitted to CNN that the United States supplies assistance to the FES unit, but wouldn't confirm whether it had supplied "lethal equipment."

"The U.S. government takes allegations of extrajudicial killings extremely seriously, and has consistently expressed concerns regarding allegations of security force abuses, the need for accountability, and the critical role of rights-respecting security forces in a healthy democracy," the embassy spokesperson said. 

Documents don't specify how much money each Salvadoran police unit receives from the United States, but in 2016 the security forces alone received US$67.9 million and US$72.7 million in 2017.