Relatives receive remains of 12 victims of ex-police gang in San Salvador

The mortal remains of 12 victims of a gang led by a former police officer, who buried some thirty bodies in his own home in western The Savior, were handed over to relatives on Thursday, the Prosecutor’s Office reported.

“Son 12 corpses that have been delivered this day to their relatives as part of the result of the investigation that we still have in progress “ in the so-called Chalchuapa case, Graciela Sagastume, head of the Feminicide unit of the Prosecutor’s Office, assured at a press conference.

The bodies were located last May in different graves in the home of the ex-police Hugo Ernesto Osorio Chávez, in Chalchuapa, department of Santa Ana, about 90 km west of San Salvador.

According to the chief prosecutor, remains of the victims -women, men and three children- were exhumed from eleven graves in the house of Osorio Chávez and then handed over to his relatives at the headquarters of the Institute of Legal Medicine (forensic), in the Salvadoran capital.

“Inside that house there could be around thirty bodies that could be recovered,” said Sagastume.

The prosecutor pointed out that forensic specialists have a “hard job” in identifying the victimswell some remains are mixed and these 12 they are the first that have been “identified”, explained Sagastume.

In addition to Osorio Chávez, nine other people remain detained for this case, which is being followed by a court in the city of Santa Ana (west) and which is declared “under reserve,” which prevents the authorities from providing details.

The Salvador It closed 2020 with 1,322 homicides, an average of 20 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, a significant reduction compared to 2019 and the lowest figure since the end of the civil war in 1992, according to official statistics.

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