The United States has quietly funded and equipped elite paramilitary police officers in El Salvador who are accused of illegally executing gang members, according to CNN.
Successive US administrations have pumped tens of millions of dollars into Salvadoran law enforcement and military to shore up the government’s “Mano Dura” or Firm Hand program, first launched in 2003 but redoubled in 2014 to tackle the country’s rampant gang problem.
Yet the country’s police will be broadly accused next month of “a pattern of behaviour by security personnel amounting to extrajudicial executions” in a United Nations report, seen in advance by CNN, that will also call on Salvadoran security forces to break a “cycle of impunity” in which killings are rarely punished.
One police unit that killed 43 alleged gang members in the first six months of last year received significant US funding, CNN can reveal. Several of those deaths have been investigated as murders by Salvadoran police.
While the unit -- known as the Special Reaction Forces (FES) -- was disbanded earlier this year, many of its officers have joined a new elite force that currently receives US funding.
The exact recipients and nature of US funding for Salvadoran police are shrouded in secrecy. Publicly available documents rarely specify which units benefit from the $67.9 million in total aid given in 2016, and the $72.7 million last year, but they do say that “vetted units” get mentors from the FBI and DEA.
But two sources with knowledge of the US train-and-equip program, who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, told CNN that the FES was the recipient of US assistance. One source detailed the kind of equipment provided, which is shown on a US report to Congress, without naming its specific recipient.
