Elite paramilitary police officers in El Salvador who are accused of illegally executing gang members are being funded and equipped by the United States, CNN reported on Wednesday.
A series of American administrations has sent tens of millions of dollars to Salvadoran security forces in an effort to combat the country's rampant gang problem.
But the U.N. is accusing those same police and paramilitary forces funded by the U.S. as carrying out a form of extrajudicial executions, and the international community says that those killings are rarely punished.
One of the suspected units was reportedly responsible for the killing of 43 alleged gang members in 2017 without prosecution.
That particular police unit has been disbanded, but other similar forces have been formed that carry out similar missions.
Th U.S. funding for these units is often shrouded in secrecy, as publicly available documents rarely specify which units benefit from the some $140 million in total aid given over the past two years.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador admitted that the U.S. had supplied assistance to the disbanded unit accused of extrajudicial killings, but insisted that the American government "takes allegations of extrajudicial killings extremely seriously, and has consistently expressed concerns regarding allegations of security force abuses, the need for accountability, and the critical role of rights-respecting security forces in a healthy democracy."
The spokesperson said that all Salvadoran police units receiving American assistance were vetted in a serious matter and must show a "fundamental commitment to effective police mechanisms and respect for human rights" or the funding stops.
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