El Salvador: Assassins For Sale | Latin America Investigates

With a murder every one and a half hours, El Salvador is counted among the world's most dangerous nations. Awash with weapons and torn apart by the internecine struggles of rival criminal gangs, the country is experiencing violence at levels unseen since the aftermath of its long and brutal civil war.

While the state struggles to find an effective law enforcement and judicial solution to the problem - the Salvadoran authorities have tried the iron fist of military force, prosecuting gangs into oblivion and even, briefly and unsuccessfully, negotiation - things have become so bad that others have started taking matters into their own hands by forming vigilante groups and tracking down and murdering gang members who are threatening their community

In this first episode of Latin America Investigates, an uncompromising and compelling new series in which we team up with some of the continent's best investigative journalists, reporter Bryan Avelar and filmmaker Lali Houghton travel to the western province of San Miguel to find out more.

There the notorious MS-13 gang rules the roost through fear and terror. With an estimated 60,000 "soldiers" nationwide - many of them bearing distinctive tattoos to mark their allegiance - and more than half a million affiliates, from lookouts to family members, MS-13 claims to both protect its own and look after the interests of the economically marginalised.

However the reality for the public is a seemingly never-ending cycle of violence, intimidation, extortion, kidnap and murder. Most people are too terrified to stand against them or even speak out, let alone help the police.

But now a vigilante death squad, called Los Exterminio, is fighting back. Accredited with at least 40 murders of gang members, it first came to prominence last summer when seven bodies were found on a country road. The dead men had all been executed with a bullet to the head and all were thought to have belonged to MS-13.

So what's driven the shadowy figures who operate under Los Exterminio's banner to take such drastic action? And what truth is there to rumours that they are funded by local businessmen and benefit from a collaborative - if secret - relationship with the police?
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Видео El Salvador: Assassins For Sale | Latin America Investigates канала Al Jazeera English