By Nelson Renteria
SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) -El Salvadoran authorities arrested a prominent human rights and anti-corruption lawyer for alleged embezzlement while she served as a state official, the Attorney General’s office said late on Sunday.
Ruth Lopez, whom police arrested at her residence on Sunday, is the anti-corruption and justice director of Cristosal, one of the country’s leading non-government human rights organizations.
The group has sharply criticized President Nayib Bukele’s hardline security policies and warned of possible irregular use of public funds by his administration.
The Attorney General’s Office linked Lopez to a case against the former president of El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Eugenio Chicas, who was arrested in February for alleged illicit enrichment. Chicas also served as press secretary for former President Salvador Sanchez Ceren (2014-2019).
“During these periods, Ruth Lopez collaborated in the theft of funds from state coffers. According to the investigations and the information gathered in the raids carried out in the case of Eugenio Chicas, we have identified her active participation in the acts with which she is charged,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement on X.
Cristosal denounced Lopez’s arrest and said that it was part of a “systematic strategy of criminalization against those who defend human rights, fueled by the government of Nayib Bukele.”
The popular Central American leader has become a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump and has welcomed deportees from the U.S., imprisoning them in the country’s immense Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.
Human rights organizations accuse Bukele of co-opting the justice system and imprisoning innocent people during a years-long state of emergency. Bukele rejects the allegations and says he has made the country safe.
(Reporting by Nelson Rentería; Editing by Raul Cortes and Emily Green)
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