Starting today, the Second Criminal Chamber of San Salvador is prosecuting Norman Quijano, a disqualified member of the Central American Parliament, Parlacen, and former candidate for the presidency of ARENA in the 2014 elections, as an absent defendant.
The Attorney General’s Office accuses him of illicit groups and electoral fraud, serious crimes that could lead to a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison if the magistrates find him responsible and impose the maximum penalty for each crime.
To Quijano, the First Criminal Chamber, at the end of the preliminary hearing, decreed an order opening a trial, applying article 345, which still contains the penalty of five to 15 years in prison because the attributed events were consummated in 2014 and at be taken to court in January 2022, the Assembly had not yet reformed that article.
It was until March 30, 2022 that the illicit groups were modified and punished with prison terms of 20 to 30 years for remaining in a gang and up to 60 for the founders, organizers, bosses, leaders, financiers or ringleaders.
The former ARENA presidential candidate is being prosecuted under the rules of the repealed 345 which he mentions. «Whoever, by himself or through another, requests, demands, offers, promotes, formulates, negotiates, agrees or agrees to agreements of non-criminal prosecution or the establishment of some prerogatives or offers benefits or advantages to the members of groups, associations or organizations, will be punished with imprisonment of five to 15 years.
While electoral fraud, article 295 of the Penal Code establishes that “anyone who pays money or in kind or through offers of particular benefits received or promised, to induce a reader to vote for a certain party or candidate or to abstain from voting or annul your vote” will be punished with imprisonment of four to six years.
According to the public ministry, in a meeting that Quijano held with the gang leaders at the beginning of March 2014 at the church headquarters of a network of pastors, in the Flor Blanca neighborhood, he asked the terrorist leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha and those from two factions of the Gang 18, to vote in the second round for ARENA and that, if they won the presidency, they would invest $100 million in the gangs and that the funds would come from the general budget of the nation.
For the public hearing, the Prosecutor’s Office has offered the accounts of two qualified witnesses, Salomón and Noé, who will testify about the offers made to them and that they received $100,000 through the German Paolo Lüers. They gave the MS $50,000, and the two factions of Gang 18, $25,000 each, that information will be provided by Salomón.
The witness Noé will affirm that Norman Quijano asked them to vote for ARENA and to let the people go and vote. That with the $100 million for the gangs they would supposedly work on reintegration, that the gangs would have freedom of movement and all the restrictions imposed by previous governments would be removed.
