U.S. police have captured the head of a notorious Honduran youth gang who is wanted at home for the killing of 28 people in a bus attack last December that shocked Central America. The Department of Homeland Security said Ebert Anibal Rivera, head of the Mara Salvatrucha gang in Honduras, was arrested after a vehicle stop in Falfurrias, Texas on Feb. 10. Rivera was later handed over to the Border Patrol. "We are trying to find out if the U.S. authorities will press charges against him and if not we will immediately ask for his extradition so he can face justice here," Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez told a news conference on Wednesday in Tegucigalpa. | Only if you promise to keep him locked up. Does Honduras have the death penalty? |
Honduran security forces have arrested more than 2,000 leading members of the Mara Salvatrucha and a rival gang, the Mara-18, in less than two years. The maras youth gangs are also active in neighboring Guatemala and El Salvador and have their roots in Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles. They established a strong presence in Central America when illegal immigrant convicts in the United States were sent back to their home countries in the late 1990s. El Salvador said this week it wants the U.S. government to provide criminal records for the thousands of Salvadorans it deports every year.
