Death Squads in El Salvador

IPS - RIGHTS-EL SALVADOR: Death Squads Still Operating

Recent arrests of police officers in El Salvador accused of committing extrajudicial executions have encouraged human rights activists and experts who have long reported the continued existence of death squads in this Central American country.

For years, human rights organisations and experts have said the death squads that operated during the counterinsurgency war in the 1980s never disappeared, but merely became groups of paid killers that still operate with impunity, and are hired to "settle scores, carry out vengeance killings, eliminate a businessman’s competitor, carry out ‘social cleansing’ or work for organised crime."