A prominent Salvadoran lawyer who is known for publicly accused the government of President Nayib Bukele of corruption and failed crime was held on Sunday evening, according to the employer of the lawyer, a human rights organization.
Ruth López, who leads the anti-corruption and justice unit of the organization, was not formally accused according to a statement from the group from Monday and its location, according to a statement from the group.
The arrest was confirmed by the office of the Attorney General of the Land, which in An online message said that Mrs. López’s “administrative detention” was linked to her earlier work as the “right hand” of a magistrate and former government official, Eugenio Chicas.
Mr. Chicas, a former president of El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal, who also served as a press secretary of former President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, was arrested in February for accusation of illegal enrichment.
“Ruth López worked together in the theft of funds from the principal of the state,” said the office of the attorney general in his position.
The arrest of Mrs. López led to immediate protest within and outside El Salvador of human rights groups and experts. They said that Mr Bekele, encouraged by his relationship with President Trump, had agreed to lock up migrants from the United States, attacked his critics.
“For years, Ruth López has courageously exposed corruption and human rights violations in El Salvador,” said Juanita Goebertus, America director of Human Rights Watch, in a statement. “Her arrest is not an isolated incident – it marks a dangerous escalation in President Bukele’s efforts to silence different opinions.”
Since 2022, Mr Bukele has held a state of emergency with which authorities can perform arrests as desired, which bypasses the appropriate process.
Initially imposed to combat the gang violence, the state of emergency led to a dramatic reduction in crime, but also has the result At least 80,000 people are held and placed in the infamous prison system of El Salvador.
The organization of Mrs. López, Cristosal, has emerged as an important force in exposing abuse in the prison system and then. The group has repeatedly accused the Bukele government of keeping people in pretial detention without access to lawyers or their families, in a condition that the director of the group, Noah Bullock, has said that amounts are forced to disappear.
Cristosal said that Mrs. López had now fallen victim to that crime, who described it as “a serious violation of human rights under international law.”
Mrs. López is at the forefront of investigating possible corruption or negligence by the government of Bukele. One study is related to the abuse of pandemic funds and another is bound by the contamination of the local water supply caused by the construction of the country’s megapison, known as Cecot. Another criticized the use of public funds to pay for Pegasus software that was used to spy on journalists and human rights groups in El Salvador.
“The link with Chicas in the Ruth case has been manufactured – a dubious pretext to lock her up randomly,” said Napoleón Campos, a political analyst of Salvadoran. Mr Campos said that the arrest should be viewed instead in the context of “human rights violations, the intimidation of environmental defenders and the broader attack by the Bukele regime for civil society.”
This month, various journalists with the Salvadoran Independent Investigative News Outlet El Faro Fled El Salvador After he learned that the government prepared Warrants for their arrests. The outlet said that such a movement would amount to “the most frontal state attack on freedom of press in El Salvador since Bukele came to the office in 2019.”
El Faro has been investigating the Bukele government and its supposed negotiations with the land leaders of the country for years and said that his journalists were placed under supervision and intimidated as a result.
A spokeswoman for the presidency, Wendy Ramos, did not answer any questions about what grounds the government had before looking for the arrest of Mrs. López or the El Faro journalists.
The Salvadoran government has consistently criticized Mr Bukele and his security policy as efforts of members of the political opposition to affect the president.
Mr Bukele’s approval classifications have consistently remained more than 80 percent in surveys of public opinion.
Mr. Bullock, director of Cristosal, has done doubt about the high assessmentsSaying that the Salvadoran public in the light of massive arrests has become afraid of expressing dissatisfaction with the president and his iron royal approach.
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