El Salvador police announced the arrest of 600 criminal gang suspects on Sunday after the nation’s government declared a month-long state of emergency earlier that day in response to a recent spike in murders nationwide, the Venezuelan news website Runrunes reported.
El Salvador’s National Civil Police (PNC) said on March 27 it arrested over 600 gang suspects after conducting raids of gang strongholds in and around San Salvador, El Salvador’s national capital, over the weekend. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele directed his nation’s federal prison system to ration food for inmates on Sunday to prepare for the influx of new prisoners.
“Don’t think they are going to be set free,” Bukele wrote of the mass of newly arrested gang suspects in a statement posted to his official Twitter page on March 27. “We are going to ration the same food we are giving now [to inmates].”
“And if the international community is worried about their little angels, they should come and bring them food, because I am not going to take budget money away from the schools to feed these terrorists,” the president added.
El Salvador’s Congress held an extraordinary plenary session on March 27 to address an “excessive increase” in murders after police across the country recorded 87 murders within the previous 72 hours. For comparison, El Salvador documented 79 homicides during the month of February.
The meeting of the national legislature was called at the request of President Bukele, who urged Congress to approve a temporary set of measures designed to curb the “serious disturbances of public order.” The legislative body voted in favor of the state of emergency request, suspending a handful of rights normally guaranteed by El Salvador’s constitution for a period of 30 days.
Salvadorans are not allowed to practice freedom of assembly or association for the next month, according to the edict. The decree also allows police in El Salvador to intervene in citizens’ telecommunications without judicial authorization. Additionally, the emergency order extends the duration of administrative detention, or incarceration without trial or charge, from 72 hours to 15 days.
Salvadoran government officials have blamed the nation’s recent murder surge on domestic and international criminal gangs operating within the Central American country, such as MS-13. President Bukele ordered El Salvador’s federal prison system chief to “carry out an immediate 24/7 lockdown of gang inmates in their cells” on March 27 in an effort to clamp down on the murder wave, according to the Associated Press (AP).
El Salvador’s PNC said on March 28 it had captured “five leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13, who they claimed ordered the weekend killings,” the AP reported.