Salvadoran police used excessive force in 116 deaths -rights prosecutor

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - At least 116 people were killed by police in El Salvador in recent years in cases involving excessive use of force and abuse of authority, the country's human rights prosecutor said in a report published on Tuesday.

The report covers the period from 2014 to 2018 when the then leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) government waged a campaign against criminal gangs blamed for one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Investigators examined 48 cases in which 116 people were "brutally assassinated" by the police, said Raquel Caballero, head of the Prosecutor's Office for the Defense of Human Rights.

"We have identified patterns of behavior of members of the national civil police," she told a news conference in the capital San Salvador.

A spokesman for the ministry of security and justice declined to comment.

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