SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – A court in El Salvador sentenced former President Mauricio Funes and his justice minister to over a decade behind bars for their link with criminal groups and failure to comply with duties, the attorney general’s office said in a tweet on Monday.
Funes was sentenced to 14 years and former defense minister, David Munguia, to 18.
“We were able to verify that these two former officials, who had the obligation to protect Salvadorans, negotiated their lives in exchange for electoral favors, acting as gang members,” Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado said on Twitter.
Munguia was first put under arrest first in 2020 for suspicions of unlawful association and other crimes linked to the arrangement of a 2012-2014 truce between gangs.
Funes, who governed from 2009 to 2014 and lives in Nicaragua, was granted Nicaraguan citizenship in 2019.
The Nicaraguan constitution holds that no citizen may be extradited.
(Reporting by Nelson Renteria; Writing by Valentine Hilaire; Editing by Brendan O’Boyle)
