A military helicopter that was taking a former credit union manager, who was suspected of embezzling $35 million, back to El Salvador crashed on Sept. 8 on its way from neighboring Honduras.
The head of El Salvador’s police forces, Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, was killed along with Manuel Coto Barrientos, the manager of the Santa Victoria cooperative bank (Cosavi), whom Chicas was escorting back from Honduras after he was arrested there last week.
The Salvadoran armed forces said the Bell UH-1H helicopter crashed on the night of Sept. 8, near San Eduardo in eastern El Salvador.
It is not clear how many people were aboard the helicopter when it crashed in Pasaquina district, close to the Honduran border.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele wrote on social media platform X: “What happened cannot be considered a simple ‘accident’. It must be investigated thoroughly and to the last consequences. We will request international help.”
Coto had been arrested earlier on Sept. 8 in Honduras, after attempting to flee to the United States with a people trafficker.
He was handed over to Salvadoran police and was being flown back to the capital, San Salvador, when the crash occurred.
In May, the attorney general of El Salvador, Rodolfo Delgado, told Cosavi employees and account holders that “senior executives” had diverted $35 million from the cooperative’s assets for their own benefit.
Arriaza had been a crucial part of Bukele’s efforts to combat gangs such as the Mara Salvatruncha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 in El Salvador.
Bukele wrote on X: “Director Arriaza Chicas was a key piece in bringing peace and security to our people.
‘Loyal and Incorruptible Man’
“[He was a] loyal and incorruptible man, who fought against everything, even when no one believed that we could win,” Bukele continued.“We will investigate this until the end, but no one will be able to return our national hero to us.”
El Salvador introduced a state of emergency in March 2022, which gives the police and army the right to suspend certain civil rights while combating gangs and criminality.
Suspects accused of gang activities can be arrested without recourse to an attorney. An estimated 81,000 people have been detained without due process since March 2022.
Bukele—who in 2021 introduced bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador—was reelected with a landslide victory in February, garnering 84 percent of the vote compared with just 6 percent for the candidate of the communist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.
Over the weekend, U.S. film producer Stacy Herbert, who is the director of El Salvador’s National Bitcoin Office, posted a picture on X of Coto’s arrest and wrote: “The Bukele model strikes again. ... The new El Salvador brings all murderers, rapists, thugs and thieves to justice.”
He said there were still about 9,000 gang members in El Salvador and that when that number falls to 3,000 or 4,000, the gangs would struggle to remain viable.
Last week, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on Bukele’s government to end the state of emergency.
The commission said data suggest that levels of violence had gone down markedly since 2022.
“They show the emergency situation has been overcome and thus a situation that justifies maintaining active the suspension of rights and protections in line with the American Convention no longer exists,” it said.
Tens of thousands of UH-1H helicopters, nicknamed Hueys, have been built since the 1960s, when they became famous during the Vietnam War.
Several air forces around the globe continue to fly them, and the aircraft have a good safety record.
