El Salvador’s supreme court declares gangs terrorist groups

El Salvador’s attorney general says the order to kill gang members in a prison over the weekend came from inside another prison.

The killings happened in Quezaltepeque prison, north of the capital San Salvador, on Saturday.

El Salvador’s Supreme Court ruled Monday that street gangs in the country would be considered terrorist outfits, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Police told newsmen Wednesday that there were no fewer than 125 murder cases every three days in the country, a staggering toll even by El Salvador’s standards.

El Salvador’s declared the nation’s road gangs and people who finance them terrorist teams on Monday. It was formed in Los Angeles, recruiting primarily Latino members.

The fight was believed to be linked to the Barrio 18 gang, a news agency quoted a spokesman for El Salvador’s president as saying.

They arrived in Central America when the United States deported thousands of immigrants who had fled there to escape civil wars that had gripped the region in the late 20th century.

National data also show that gangs have some 72,000 members operating across the country, and that 13,000 of them are in detention.

Criminal gangs have been pressuring the government to include them in a commission examining ways to stem endemic urban violence for which these same groups are, to a large extent, responsible. At least 14 gang members held at this prison facility located just northwest of San Salvador were killed in violence that authorities blame on a conflict within a faction of the Barrio 18 gang.

The gangs have intensified their attacks against authorities and public transportation in recent weeks to pressure the government into negotiations.