Eleven members of the Salvatrucha mara indicted in New York for murder and extortion

In a new blow to the violent mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), which operates in eastern New York State, the justice indicted eleven members on Tuesday for homicide, extortion, robbery, drug trafficking and possession of weapons.

Four of the accused are also accused of killing Nazareth Claure, a young mother, on April 11, 2021, whose body was wrapped in garbage bags and placed in the trunk of a car and discovered at a police checkpoint two days later, a crime for which they could be sentenced to death.

With this indictment, justice “has taken another step towards justice for the murder of the victim and her family, and will not stop until the MS-13 gang is eliminated from our communities once and for all,” prosecutor Breon Pace said in a statement.

The prosecutor attacks the “cruel depravity” and “senseless violence” of this band born in the 1980s in Los Angeles and spread throughout Central America, Mexico and almost the entire United States.

For Department of Homeland Security agent Ricky J.Patel, the “cruelty and brutality of the crimes perpetrated by some of the defendants is beyond comprehension.”

One of the defendants, Billy Ayala-Pineda, known as “Berdugo”, arrested on December 15, 2021, is considered to be the top official of the Southern Locos Salvatruchas (SLS), a branch that operates in Queens and Long Island, and leader of the LA Program (Los Angeles Program).

According to US justice, Ayala-Pineda led the SLS drug trafficking activity, the acquisition of weapons, as well as violence against members of rival gangs and against Salvatrucha adherents that he considered to have been unfair.

The other 10 detainees are all members and associates of MS-13 and are accused of drug trafficking and violence, exposing themselves to a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

On Long Island, which is home to a large community of Salvadoran immigrants, MS-13, a “transnational criminal organization” with about 10,000 members in the United States alone, is the “most violent” organization, according to the New York police.

The mara, whose leaders are based in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, is organized under the umbrella of groups known as “Programs” or “clicas”, which assist each other with firearms, drug trafficking connections, territorial disputes with rival gangs, and provide safe places for members wanted by the police.

American justice launched a crusade against this gang in 2003 and has since arrested and convicted “hundreds” of members.

The young Leniz Escobar, known as “La Diablita”, member of MS-13, has been tried yesterday in the court of Islip, on Long Island, for her alleged involvement in 2017 in the murder of four young men from a rival gang for which she could be sentenced to life imprisonment.

af/yow