Who is “Crook”, one of El Salvador’s most powerful gang members who was extradited from Mexico to the US

He is considered the second in command of the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13one of the most historically powerful gangs in El Salvador and whose tentacles extend to other Central American countries.

He was also one of the most wanted gang members in the United States and identified as a person key in the supposed negotiations between this organization and the Salvadoran governmenta process whose existence the president of that country, Nayib Bukele, has always denied.

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Elmer Canales Rivera, aka “Crook”was arrested this Thursday in Mexico following an extradition request from Washington.

The Salvadoran media outlet La Prensa Gráfica was the first to report the news, citing anonymous sources.

Neither the Mexican nor the American authorities announced this publicly, but an official at the US Embassy in Mexico confirmed the arrest to BBC Mundo and also that this Friday he was already in custody in Houston (Texas), awaiting transfer to New York.

Bukele reacted to the news with an emoji on the social network X, formerly Twitter.

???? https://t.co/xLIPGg0BGV

-Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) November 9, 2023

BBC Mundo requested comments from the Presidency on the matter and received the same response, with the addition that the president will not give any further explanations on the matter.

Historical “Ranflero”

Rivera Canals It is one of founding and high-ranking members of the “historic ranfla,” the original MS-13 command council, notes MS-13 researcher and author Steven Dudley: The Formation of America’s Most Notorious Gang (“MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang”), in its midst Crime of perception.

That is why he is considered one of the “apostles”. And the ranfla originally had 12 members, Dudley points out, and they called themselves the “Twelve Apostles of the Devil”.

The “Devil” thing is a reference to Borromeo Enríque Henríquez, also known as the “Little Devil of Hollywood”, top leader of MS-13.

The ranfla is the one who makes all the important decisions of the Mara Salvatrucha, all those who investigated it agree: from the amounts of extortion against the civilian population, the punishments for those considered traitors and what pacts to establish with other criminal actors.

MS-13 leaders according to the United States Department of the Treasury. (UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY).

According to an indictment made public in February this year by the United States, the gang had allied itself in Mexico at certain times with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas.

This would have been one of the tasks of the call Mexico Program by Mara Salvatrucha.

In the aforementioned court document, the indictment on organized crime and “terrorism” charges against 13 important MS-13 leadersas well as the arrest of three of them in Mexican territory.

And he also points to several gang members accused of having important roles in the alleged negotiations between MS-13 and two senior officials of the current Salvadoran government so that they reduce their homicides between 2019 and 2021.

These dialogues, previously brought to light by extensive journalistic investigations such as those of the digital newspaper El Faro, were always denied by the Bukele government.

He declared war on gangs in March 2022 after 80 murders were recorded in one weekend, following months of relative calm and reduced levels of street violence.

At his request, the Legislative Assembly decreed exceptional regime that continues to this day, after being extended for the twentieth time this week. According to the most recent official data, more than 71,000 alleged gang members were arrested during this period, although the measure has led to accusations of arbitrary detention and human rights violations.

US authorities also do not question negotiations with previous administrations, with members of the then-in-power Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in 2012, as well as with the Republican Nationalist Alliance (Arena).

“Irregular” launch

According to the court case in the United States, the man now arrested, a 45-year-old man also nicknamed “The Thief”, He had already been arrested in June 2021.

However, after serving time in the maximum security prison of Zacatecoluca, known as “Zacatraz”, he was released months later, “despite an Interpol Red Notice and a pending US extradition request.”.

This was pointed out by Washington in the above-mentioned indictment.

According to the Salvadoran press, Crook lived in a luxurious apartment in the capital San Salvador until he fled first to Guatemala and then to Mexico.

During the emergency regime, 71,776 arrests were made, according to data from the Salvadoran government from July this year. (GET IMAGES).

In a interview with the vice-president of El Salvador, Félix Ulloa, in February, on the BBC He was asked about Canales Rivera’s release from prison, to which he replied that he had “no idea.”

“I don’t know. Because we had some kind of problem with the U.S. government regarding the extradition request and everything. I don’t know if this is the same case that we were asked to extradite for,” Ulloa told journalist Will Grant.

“But we have already explained and made it very clear: the government has no possibility of resolving the matter because it is in the hands of the Judiciary.

“They accuse us of controlling all the powers of the State, but we say that we have to respect the division of powers and functions. They want us to go to court and say, ‘Send him to the United States.’ We can not do that. It is under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court“added the person in charge.

The four crimes charged against Canales Rivera and the other 13 highest-ranking members of MS-13 are conspiracy to provide and conceal material support to “terrorists”, conspiracy to commit “acts of terrorism” that transcend national borders, conspiracy to finance “terrorism” and conspiracy “narcoterrorism”.

Crook would be the first of the defendants to face charges on US soil.

Source: Elcomercio