San Salvador, El Salvador: El Salvador’s Congress on Wednesday charged a politician with a deal with the country’s powerful street gang of legislative immunity that blocked his prosecution.
Sixty-six of the Legislative Assembly’s 84 lawmakers voted to support the attorney general’s petition to open Norman Quijano to prosecution. Twelve legislators from his conservative party walked out of the chamber to vote.
Quijano was elected to a five-year term in the Central American Parliament this year. He previously served as federal legislator and mayor of San Salvador. Quijano left El Salvador just before the end of his legislative term earlier this year, ahead of his election to the regional body.
In November, Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado asked the Legislative Assembly to strip Quijano’s immunity so that he could be prosecuted for alleged electoral fraud and illicit affair.
The allegation stems from the 2014 presidential campaign in which Quijano was a candidate for the conservative nationalist Republican Alliance party. Prosecutors say the former San Salvador mayor paid the country’s powerful street gang to support his presidential campaign. Quijano lost to the leftist Farabundo Mart National Liberation Front’s Salvador Sánchez Cerna.
The Attorney General’s Office previously requested that the Quijanos immunity be removed in 2020, but the then-legislative assembly rejected the request.
Last week, the US Treasury accused officials in the administration of current President Nayib Bukele of engaging in clandestine talks with gangs. The US government alleged that they bought the gang’s cooperation in reducing the murder rate in the country and sought their support in legislative elections earlier this year.
Bukele has vehemently denied the allegations.
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