ATLANTA, GA — Four MS-13 members have been convicted for murder, attempted murder, armed robberies, and firearms offenses after a four-week trial.
Miguel Alvarado-Linares, Ernesto Escobar, Dimas Alfaro-Granados, and Jairo Reyna-Ozuna, were convicted late in the day on July 15, 2013 by a federal jury in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Georgia. The U.S. Attorney’s office states:
These four MS-13 members committed a host of brutal crimes that devastated countless lives in Northern Georgia. As a result of the tireless work by the prosecutors and investigators who tackled this case, the defendants will be removed from the streets they have terrorized.
“These defendants were the leaders of MS-13, an international gang known for its gratuitous murders,” said U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Sally Quillian Yates.
The convictions come less than one month after the sentencing of another MS-13 gang leader in New York for murder and attempted murder.
Yates’s analysis of of the gang is confirmed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) threat assessment of MS-13. They state:
Members of Mara Salvatrucha, better known as MS-13, who are mostly Salvadoran nationals or first generation Salvadoran-Americans, but also Hondurans, Guatemalans, Mexicans, and other Central and South American immigrants.
The FBI identifies MS-13 in at least 42 U.S. states, in addition to a presence in the District of Columbia. The FBI estimates the gang to have 6,000-10,000 members in the U.S.
The United Nations (UN) 2012 Office of Drugs and Crime report on Organized Crime in Central and South America provides further details on MS-13 and the gang’s transnational nature. The UN identifies MS-13 as “Maras” or street gangs that generally avoid transnational cocaine trafficking in favor of human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and arms trading.