Salvadoran police officer confesses to 97 murders and claims he was paid by mayor close to Bukele

A Salvadoran police officer has confessed to participating in at least 97 murders between 2015 and 2020 as a member of an extermination group dedicated to executing suspected gang members, according to the Salvadoran newspaper El Faro. Among the victims were minors, businesspeople, and a priest. The officer, now a witness for the prosecution, testified that a mayor close to President Nayib Bukele paid him for 36 of those killings.

According to the publication, the officer was arrested in August 2020, accused along with three other police officers of the disappearance and murder of two young people in 2017. After his arrest, the officer agreed to cooperate with the prosecution and became a protected witness under the code name Horus and confessed to taking part in 75 cases that resulted in 97 deaths over five years.

Horus’s testimony was deemed credible enough for a Salvadoran court to sentence his fellow officers in 2020 to up to 180 years in prison. However, the ruling did not include the mayor, despite the fact that he was mentioned 141 times by the main witness. For years, the case and Horus’s declaration were kept secret by court order, but a leak known as Guacamaya Leaks — which exposed millions of internal emails from the Salvadoran police — led to the discovery of the confession.

The politician named by the officer is Salvador Menéndez, who has been mayor of La Paz Oeste since 2012 and is a member of the GANA party, the same party that brought Bukele to power in 2019. Menéndez has repeatedly described himself as a “friend” and “ally” of Bukele, who has also expressed admiration and respect for him on social media. In 2019, Menéndez said he personally financed one of Bukele’s presidential campaign rallies in his municipality’s central park, and in 2024 he posted a video from a private party held during Bukele’s second inauguration.

Although the case reached Salvadoran courts in 2020 under then–attorney general Raúl Melara, the trial against the officers took place in December of that year — after Bukele had already purged the judiciary and installed his own attorney general, Rodolfo Delgado. Delgado has since buried multiple cases involving corruption and alleged pacts between gangs and the government.

The witness’s full confession spans 220 pages. In it, Horus admitted to involvement in 75 cases with a total of 97 victims. In 23 of those, he claimed that he and his group were paid by Mayor Menéndez for 36 murders. According to the witness, at times the mayor provided them with the victims’ names, while in other cases they carried out killings independently and later received payment — usually about $1,000 per victim. The witness also said that the mayor provided them with vehicles and illegal weapons to carry out the killings.

In total, Horus stated that Menéndez paid the group of police officers $27,500 for the murder of 36 people between 2015 and 2018. According to El Faro, the mayor acknowledged being aware of the witness’s accusations but said he had never been summoned by any authority to testify. He also admitted to giving donations to the local police station in his municipality over the years, but insisted they were legitimate acts of support in his capacity as mayor, and denied that it was for illicit purposes.

Among the cases in which Horus named Mayor Menéndez as the mastermind was a double homicide committed in the early hours of February 26, 2016. The witness said the mayor ordered them to find several gang members, decapitate them, and leave their heads at the entrance of the municipality “to send a message” to the gangs and to portray his town as one of the most violent — supposedly to attract more funding from the central government.

El Faro verified that in at least 10 of the 23 cases there were local news reports confirming that the victims died on the dates and under the circumstances described by the witness, including the murder of two alleged gang members who were decapitated.

According to the report, the police officers identified their victims, approached them under the guise of a police operation, and took them handcuffed to nearby sugarcane fields — common in the region — where they were executed. After the killings, the officers tampered with the crime scenes, placing illegal weapons on the bodies to stage the appearance of a shootout.

One of the most notorious cases described by the witness was the murder of priest Ricardo Antonio Cortez, rector of the San Óscar Arnulfo Romero seminary in Santiago de María, Usulután, on August 7, 2020, while he was driving to the seminary. In that case, the witness said they received assistance from members of another death squad in a neighboring municipality, along with police chiefs from both groups. According to Horus, Mayor Menéndez was not involved in that killing; instead, it was allegedly ordered by a drug trafficker known only as “Chepón,” who reportedly had ties to Mexican cartels.

After the murder of Father Cortez, the Catholic Church of El Salvador expressed deep concern and demanded that the government clarify the facts and deliver justice. In the preceding months, another priest, identified as Walter Vásquez, had also been killed. Two years later, in 2022, the bishop of the Diocese of Santiago de María, in eastern El Salvador, Monsignor William Iraheta, told La Prensa Gráfica that he suspected both killings had been carried out by hired hitmen and reiterated his call for justice.

The witness’s confession also mentions other cases in which the victims had no connection to gangs — among them, a prosecutor who had been investigating the officers for the murder of four young men. According to the testimony, the agents planned to kill the prosecutor during a court hearing in March 2018, but after being released, they decided to spare his life.

As of the publication of this report, neither the Salvadoran government, the National Civil Police, nor the Office of the Attorney General had issued a statement. EL PAÍS reached out to the presidential press secretary, Ernesto Sanabria, to request an official response, but after several attempts received no reply. According to his résumé, published on the presidency’s Transparency portal, Sanabria served as an adviser to Mayor Menéndez in 2014.

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