The country registered at least 14 homicides on Friday and, according to local press reports, this Saturday another 38 murders were added.
The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, requested this Saturday from Twitter to Congress to decree an exceptional regime at a time when the country faces an escalation of murders since Friday attributed to gangs.
“I request the @AsambleaSV (Legislative Assembly) to decree today an EXCEPTION REGIME, in accordance with article 29 of the Constitution of the Republic,” the president published on Twitter.
El Salvador registered at least 14 homicides on Friday and, according to local press reports, some 38 murders were added this Saturday, the highest figure in a single day during the Bukele government.
For its part, the Police Workers Movement indicated on its networks that “50 homicides are reported nationwide on March 26, 2022,” but this data has not been confirmed or denied by the authorities.
The leader of Congress, Ernesto Castro, responded to Bukele’s request and called, also from the same social network, for an “extraordinary plenary” session at 11:00 p.m. local time (05:00 GMT).
“We are with you! Count on it,” Castro added in another message.
The Salvadoran Magna Carta stipulates the suspension of constitutional guarantees in the event of “war, invasion of territory, rebellion, sedition, catastrophe, epidemic or other general calamity, or serious disturbance of public order.”
The guarantees that Congress can suspend by invoking this article are the freedom to enter and leave the country, freedom of expression, the inviolability of correspondence, the prohibition of the intervention of telecommunications without a court order.
They also include freedom of association, the right of all detainees to be informed of the reasons for their arrest, the guarantee of the assistance of a defense attorney in judicial proceedings and the maximum period of 72 hours of administrative detention and consignment before a judge.
For the approval of the state of emergency, 63 votes of the 84 deputies are necessary, of which the ruling party has at least 64.
Before requesting the state of emergency, Bukele said that the Police and the Army “must let the agents and soldiers do their job and must defend them from the accusations of those who protect gang members.”
In addition, he pointed out that the Attorney General’s Office “must be effective with the cases” and that “we will also be aware of the judges who favor criminals.”
The Salvadoran president did not clarify if this message is an endorsement of the use of lethal force by the security forces.
The authorities have not given details of the reasons for this increase, while the Police figures show that the behavior of these crimes has remained above the average on several days in March.
With the homicides registered until Friday, El Salvador reached 86 homicides in March, according to data released by the Police, a figure higher than that registered in January and February, with 85 and 79 violent deaths, respectively.
In November 2021, the country also registered a sudden rise in homicides that left more than 40 murders in three days, in this context Bukele criticized the indications that his government has a “truce” with the gangs.
The US Treasury Department sanctioned two Bukele government officials in December 2021 for alleged “secret negotiations” with the MS13.
According to the United States, Osiris Luna, director of the prisons, and Carlos Marroquín, director of Reconstruction of the Social Fabric “directed, facilitated and organized” a series of meetings with imprisoned gang leaders, as part of the Salvadoran government’s efforts to negotiate “a secret truce” with the MS13 bosses.
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