El Salvador death squads targeting criminals: Church

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (Reuters) – A spike in the number
of murders of gang members and criminals in El Salvador is
raising concern that resurgent death squads are carrying out
“social cleansing,” the Catholic Church said on Thursday.

Last year, 3,812 people were murdered in the Central
American nation where a civil war between Marxist guerrillas
and the right-wing government raged from 1980 to 1992, up from
2,993 killed in 2004.

Church lawyers said in a report that the killings
“systematically” targeted criminals, and recalled the brutal
murders of rebels and sympathizers carried out by right-wing
death squads during the war.

“The systematic nature of the cases leads one to believe
that they have been committed to sow terror and carry out
social cleansing,” the report said.

The Church did not say who might be responsible for the
killings, but during the conflict it was mostly members of the
security forces.

In recent years, El Salvador and neighboring Guatemala and
Honduras have suffered a surge in crime carried out by Hispanic
street gangs originally formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s.

In April, El Salvador’s police chief said regional
governments could wipe out the tattooed street mobs in two
months by treating them like opponents in a war.