Skip to footer

Cops unite in Central America: New deal allows cross-border pursuits

The agreement will allow law enforcement agencies from one country to pursue suspects over the border into a neighboring country, and encourage states to share criminal records.

• InSight Crime researches, analyzes, and investigates organized crime in the Americas. Find all of Hannah Stone's research here.

The governments of Central America and the Dominican Republic are planning measures to share information on criminal records and allow “hot pursuit” chases across borders, in an effort to fight transnational criminal groups.

Designed to target organized crime groups, the agreement will allow law enforcement agencies from one country to pursue suspects over the border into a neighboring country. The agreement will also see states share criminal records so suspects are prosecuted as repeat offenders for crimes they have committed in other countries.

Representatives of the governments agreed on the wording of the deal at a conference in Panama last week, reported EFE. Once the agreement is signed by justice ministers from each country, it will be taken to the mid-2013 Central American Integration System's (SICA) annual summit for signature by the presidents.

InSight Crime Analysis

Weak law enforcement cooperation between countries and lack of border controls has helped make Central America an attractive venue for organized crime with criminals able to move quickly into the next country in order to escape pursuit by the law. One example is offered by the case of Jose Natividad Luna Pereira, or “Chepe Luna,” a Salvadoran drug trafficker who in recent years has been hiding out in Honduras, where he also holds citizenship, after a series of failed police operations to capture him in El Salvador.

Those that do get caught may get away with relatively light sentences despite a long criminal history if it is their first offense in the country where they are arrested.

Free movement policies, like the Central America-4 (CA-4) Border Control Agreement, have also made it easier for criminals to do business between El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

The Central American Parliament, which oversees SICA, has plans to expand the Central American Court of Justice to further coordinate law enforcement efforts in the region, currently a major corridor for trafficking drugs from South America up to Mexico and the United States.

The case of Facundo Cabral, an Argentine folk singer murdered in Guatemala in 2011, has also drawn attention to the importance of cooperation in the region. Costa Rican Alejandro Jimenez, alias "El Palidejo," allegedly ordered the hit, which was intended to kill Nicaraguan nightclub owner Henry Fariñas. Authorities in all three countries have been cooperating in the case, which has also led to arrests in Colombia.

–  Hannah Stone is a writer for Insight – Organized Crime in the Americas, which provides research, analysis, and investigation of the criminal world throughout the region. Find all of her research here.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Cops unite in Central America: New deal allows cross-border pursuits
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2013/0312/Cops-unite-in-Central-America-New-deal-allows-cross-border-pursuits
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe