El Salvador has extradited few criminal suspects under treaty
El Salvador has extradited few criminal suspects under treaty
Posted Saturday, Aug. 30, 2014
By Bill Miller
Star-Telegram staff writer
The United States and El Salvador have a “bilateral extradition treaty,” signed in 1911, that lists a number of offenses for which criminal suspects can be extradited. Intoxication manslaughter is not on the list. Very few extraditions have actually resulted from the treaty, even for crimes listed, according to government news releases.
Despite having the treaty in place for 89 years, there were no extraditions until after the year 2000. That’s when El Salvador amended its constitution to allow the extradition of Salvadoran nationals, U.S. officials said.
The first extradition from that country was in 2010, and it was for a Texas case. Jose Marvin Martinez, a Salvadoran national, was convicted in 2006 in Brazoria County of one count of sexual assault of a child and one count of indecency with a child. The child was his daughter.
He was released on bail and left the country before the jury began deliberating, the Justice Department said in a news release at the time. When El Salvador extradited him, however, it was just for the sexual assault charge because the charge of indecency with a child was not on the list, the news release said.
Lanny A. Breuer, then an assistant U.S. attorney, said in the release that Martinez’s extradition “paves the way forward in our law enforcement partnership with El Salvador.”
“The long arm of the law reaches farther with every successful extradition to and from the United States, as we work with our partners around the world to make sure criminals cannot find safe haven from justice,” he wrote.
More:
http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/08/30/6079921/el-salvador-has-extradited-few.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy
