He is considered the second in command of the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13, one 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 alleged negotiations between that organization and the Salvadoran governmenta process whose existence the president of that country, Nayib Bukele, has always denied.
Elmer Canales Rivera, alias “Crook”was arrested this Thursday in Mexico due to an extradition request from Washington.
The Salvadoran media La Prensa Gráfica was the first to report the news, citing anonymous sources.
Neither the Mexican nor the American authorities announced it publicly, but an official from 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 a comment on the matter from the Presidency and received the same response, with the addition that the president is not going to give any further explanations on the matter.
Historical “Ranflero”
Canales Rivera is one of the founding and highest-ranking members of the “historical ranfla”, the original command board of MS-13, notes Steven Dudley, researcher and author of MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang (“MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang”), in its midst Insight Crime.
For this reason, 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, alias the “Little Devil of Hollywood”, top leader of MS-13.
The ranfla is the one that makes all the important decisions of the Mara Salvatrucha, all those who have investigated it agree: from the amounts of extortion to the civilian population, the punishments for those considered traitors and what pacts to establish with other criminal actors.
According to an accusation made public in February of this year by the United States, the gang would have allied in Mexico at certain times with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas.
That would have been one of the tasks of the call Mexico Program of the Mara Salvatrucha.
In said judicial document the indictment on charges of organized crime and “terrorism” against 13 important leaders of the MS-13as well as the arrest of three of them in Mexican territory.
And he also points out several of the gang members accused of having important roles in the alleged negotiations between MS-13 and two high-ranking 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, have been always denied by the Bukele government.
He declared war on the gangs in March 2022 after 80 murders were recorded in one weekend, after months of relative calm and with reduced levels of violence in the streets.
At his request, the Legislative Assembly decreed a regime of exception that continues to this day, after having been extended for the twentieth time this week. According to the most recent official data, more than 71,000 suspected gang members have been arrested during that time, although the measure accumulates accusations of arbitrary detentions and human rights violations.
US authorities also do not question negotiations with previous administrations, with members of the then-ruling Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in 2012, as well as with the Republican Nationalist Alliance (Arena).
“Irregular” release
According to the judicial file in the United States, the now arrested man, a 45-year-old man also nicknamed “The Thief,” He had already been arrested in June 2021.
However, after serving a sentence in the maximum security prison of Zacatecoluca, known as “Zacatraz”, he was released months later “despite the Interpol Red Notice and the pending US extradition request.”.
This was pointed out by Washington in the aforementioned accusation.
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.
In a interview with the vice president of El Salvador, Félix Ulloa, in February, the BBC He asked him about Canales Rivera’s release from prison, to which he responded that he had “no idea.”
“Don’t know. Because we’ve had some kind of problem with the US government regarding the extradition request and all that stuff. I don’t know if this is the same case for which we were asked to extradite,” Ulloa told journalist Will Grant.
“But we already explained it 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 official.
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.
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