Mauricio Funes, who currently lives in Nicaragua, denies the allegations and says the 2012 ceasefire was brokered by the Church.
A court in El Salvador has sentenced former President Mauricio Funes to 14 years in prison for negotiating with gangs during his administration.
Monday’s sentence follows a trial that began in April with Funes, who lived in neighboring Nicaragua. El Salvador changed its laws last year to allow trials in absentia.
Prosecutors had charged Funes, who served as president from 2009 to 2014, with unauthorized cooperation and failure to fulfill his duties for a gang truce negotiated in 2012.
Funes had denied negotiating with the gangs or giving their leaders any privileges, insisting that the truce was brokered by the Catholic Church, not the government.
Former Funes Security Minister General David Munguia Payes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his involvement in the negotiations.
“We were able to verify that these two former officials, who had a duty to protect Salvadorans, were negotiating for their lives in exchange for electoral favors, acting as gang members,” Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado said on Twitter.
Funes’ 14-year prison sentence was the sum of eight years for unauthorized access and six years for failure to perform duties.
Prosecutors say the gang negotiations aimed to get the country’s powerful street gangs to lower the murder rate in exchange for benefits for their imprisoned leaders.
El Salvador has prosecuted Funes, 64, for other alleged crimes in at least half a dozen cases.
In 2015, El Salvador’s Supreme Court ruled that the gangs are “terrorist” organizations.
The two main criminal groups in El Salvador, Mara Salvatrucha – better known as MS-13 – and Barrio 18, together have an estimated 70,000 members.
Several thousand suspected gang members have been detained over the past year as part of current President Nayib Bukele’s efforts to crack down on the groups.
However, before Bukele imposed his controversial ‘state of exception’, the right-wing leader was accused of negotiating with the gangs.
In December 2021, the US Treasury said Bukele’s government was secretly negotiating a truce with gang leaders.
Imprisoned leaders were allegedly given privileges in exchange for delaying assassinations and giving political support to Bukele’s party. Local news outlet El Faro had previously reported on the negotiations.
Former Attorney General Raul Melara had said he would investigate the allegations, but after Bukele’s party dominated the 2021 midterm elections and took control of Congress, lawmakers ousted Melara.
Rights groups have criticized El Salvador’s crackdown on suspected gang members, with Amnesty International accusing Bukele’s government of widespread abuses.
“The systematic violation of human rights and the dismantling of the rule of law are not the answer to the problems facing the country,” Amnesty said in a report last month.