A pastor in El Salvador has been accused of being involved in gang violence and of using his religious duties as a front to meet drug lords in prison.
Marvin Ramos Quintanilla was released from prison three years ago and appeared to be a transformed man. He found a city government job, joined an evangelical church and even got ordained as a pastor, according to CT Post.
However on July 28 Ramos was arrested again alongside several alleged leaders of Mara Salvatrucha, a gang labelled as an international criminal organisation by the US.
ReutersLast year El Salvador had the highest homicide rate of any country at peace.
The gang's main rival is Barrio 18 and between the two they terrorise El Salvador. Partly thanks to gang violence, the central American nation had the highest homicide rate of any country not at war last year.
Prosecutors told a court that Ramos used his ordaination as a ruse to enter prison and meet with jailed gang leaders. The court was presented with hundreds of telephone records which purport to involve Ramos and appear to show him ordering the killing of three gang members in prison.
Advertisement
Ramos denies the charges.
"It is not true that I am the (gang's) financier. It is not true that I have entered the prisons. It is not true," he said during a recent court appearance. "I had left that behind me."
Salvador Ruano, mayor of the San Salvador suburb of Ilopango, has confirmed Ramos worked for him as part of a team helping poor communities, especially youth and single mothers.
Together with his wife and two children, Ramos attended a Nazarene evangelical church. "He seemed like good people. I had heard that he had left the gangs," one congregant told Associated Press.
Pastor Nelson Valdez, director of RED Torre Fuerte which gave Ramos his role of a chaplain, said: "For me Marvin is a person of spirituality, and ever since I met him I have seen him as a man following the Lord."
Prosecutors allege that Ramos used these credentials to preach inside prisons but he denies ever entering the prison. "My work has been in the communities," he said.
