SAN SALVADOR (AP) — The Congress of El Salvador on Tuesday approved a reform of the Code of Criminal Procedure to make the crime of femicide imprescriptible and allow the Salvadoran public prosecutor’s office to initiate criminal proceedings in these cases, regardless of the time elapsed. since the facts.
Salvadoran law punishes as femicide the crime against a woman motivated by hatred or contempt for her status as a woman. He is punished with sentences of 20 to 35 years in prison and, until today, he is prosecuted as long as 15 years have not elapsed since the facts.
The deputies added, by a majority of 76 votes from all parties, femicide and aggravated femicide to the list of crimes which do not prescribe article 32 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, so that they are among the exceptions to the prescription, which is regulated in article 34 of the same.
Since 2008, in El Salvador, the crimes of torture, terrorism, kidnapping, genocide, disappearance and war are imprescriptible, to which Congress added in 2015 sexual crimes against minors and, in 2021, those of corruption.
After a suspension of the legislative session, a second amendment to article 58-A of the integral law for a life without violence for women should also be approved on Tuesday, which reiterates that criminal action is not time-barred in these cases. .
The deputy Marcela Pineda, del partido oficialista Nuevas Ideas, recorded that 225 mujeres fueron “asesinadas por odio, por ser mujer, por su vestimenta” in 2018 y que “la única concreta action que brindó la vieja Asamblea Legislativa fue decretar un duelo por tres days”.
“The number of feminicides that have happened this year is alarming, we will support them, but remaining punitive is insufficient,” said MP John Wright Sol, of the opposition Nuestro Tiempo, who proposes to also protect the children of the victims. . of feminicides.
After Salvadoran police recorded the deaths of five women in five days, from February 7 to 11, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced on Twitter the design of a strategy against feminicides.
Figures from the Salvadoran prosecutor’s office record seven femicides in the first 45 days of 2023.
Femicide fell slightly between 2021 and 2022, from 80 to 53 cases, according to tax statistics. The number of people convicted of this crime also fell from 49 to 23 during the same period, as well as those prosecuted, from 69 to 27.