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El Salvador president pledges white-collar prison in ‘war’ on corruption
SAN SALVADOR, June 1 (Reuters) – El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele on Thursday pledged to build a prison to hold white-collar criminals as part of a crackdown on corruption that he likened to his fight against criminal gangs.
“Just as we fought the gangs head on with the full force of the state, we will launch a full-on war against corruption,” he said during a national address to mark his fifth year of being in office. “Just as we built a prison for the terrorists, we will build one for the corrupt.”
Bukele launched a brutal campaign on the country’s violent gangs over a year ago, suspending constitutional rights in a so-called state of exception. The policy has won broad popular support but human rights groups say innocent people have been caught up in the crackdown.
The government in February moved thousands of suspected gang members to a newly opened “mega prison”.
“We will fight white-collar criminals wherever they come from,” Bukele added, “but we will only use legal means.”
Bukele also used his speech to announce bills to slim down the country’s political system by cutting the number of deputies in the country’s unicameral Congress to 60 from 84, and turn the small Central American country’s 262 municipalities into 44 districts.
These bills will need to be voted through Congress, he said.
Later in the speech, Bukele said former President Alfredo Cristiani’s property was being raided.
A court ordered Cristiani’s provisional arrest over a year ago for alleged involvement in covering up the murder of six Jesuit priests and two of their staff during the country’s civil war in the 1980s.
The address ended to shouts of “re-election” from the gathering in the Congress.
In March, a newspaper poll showed that nearly 70% of Salvadorans favored Bukele’s bid for a second term, despite an explicit constitutional prohibition against serving consecutive terms.
Bukele’s presidential term ends next year.
Reporting by Nelson Renteria and Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Jacqueline Wong
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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No perjury charges for British soldiers accused of lying in Bloody Sunday probe
- 15 British soldiers accused of lying in an inquiry regarding Bloody Sunday will not be charged with perjury, prosecutors announced Friday.
- Bloody Sunday was one of the deadliest days of the Troubles, a decades-long regional conflict. 13 civilians were killed by members of the British Parachute Regiment in Derry.
- Victims’ families expressed outrage at the decision, with John Kelly — whose brother, Michael, was killed on Bloody Sunday — calling it an “affront to the rule of law.”
Fifteen British soldiers who allegedly lied to an inquiry into Bloody Sunday, one of the deadliest days of the decades-long Northern Ireland conflict, will not face perjury charges, prosecutors said Friday.
There was insufficient evidence to convict the soldiers or a former alleged member of the Irish Republican Army about their testimony before an inquiry into the 1972 killings of 13 civilians by Britain’s Parachute Regiment in Derry, also known as Londonderry, the Public Prosecution Service said.
An initial investigation into the slayings on Jan. 30, 1972 concluded the soldiers were defending themselves from a mob of IRA bombers and gunmen. But a 12-year-long inquiry concluded in 2010 that soldiers unjustifiably opened fire on unarmed and fleeing civilians and then lied about it for decades.
FORMER BRITISH SOLDIER TO STAND TRIAL FOR 1972 ‘BLOODY SUNDAY’ KILLINGS IN NORTHERN IRELAND
Families of the victims were outraged by the decision. John Kelly, whose brother Michael was killed by paratroopers, spoke for the group and called it an “affront to the rule of law.”
“Why is it that the people of Derry cannot forget the events of Bloody Sunday, yet the Parachute Regiment, who caused all of the deaths and injury on that day, apparently cannot recall it?” Kelly said. “The answer to this question is quite simple but painfully obvious: The British Army lied its way through the conflict in the north.”
Although a quarter century has passed since the Good Friday peace accord in 1998 largely put to rest three decades of violence involving Irish republican and British loyalist militants and U.K. soldiers, “the Troubles″ still reverberate. Some 3,600 people were killed — most in Northern Ireland, though the IRA also set off bombs in England.
Only one ex-paratrooper from Bloody Sunday, known as Soldier F, faces prosecution for two murders and five attempted murders. He was among the 15 soldiers who could have faced a perjury charge.
While victims continue to seek justice for past carnage, the possibility of a criminal prosecution could soon vanish.
The British government passed a Legacy and Reconciliation Bill last year that would have given immunity from prosecution for most offenses by militant groups and British soldiers after May 1. But a Belfast judge ruled in February that the bill does not comply with human rights law. The government is appealing the ruling.
Attorney Ciaran Shiels, who represents some of the Bloody Sunday families, said they would not rule out further legal action.
“It is of course regrettable that this decision has been communicated to us only today, some 14 years after the inquiry’s unequivocal findings, but less than two weeks before the effective enactment date of the morally bankrupt legacy legislation designed specifically to allow British Army veterans to escape justice for its criminal actions in the north of Ireland,” Shiels said.
Senior Public Prosecutor John O’Neill said the decision not to bring criminal charges was based on three things: accounts given by soldiers in 1972 were not admissible; much of the evidence the inquiry relied on is not available today; and the inquiry’s conclusion that testimony was false did not always meet the criminal standard of proof.
“I wish to make clear that these decisions not to prosecute in no way undermine the findings of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry that those killed or injured were not posing a threat to any of the soldiers,” O’Neill said.
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