A judge sen­tenced for­mer El Sal­vador Pres­i­dent Mauri­cio Fu­nes to 14 years in prison Mon­day for ne­go­ti­at­ing with gangs dur­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Fu­nes’ tri­al be­gan in April with the for­mer leader liv­ing in Nicaragua. El Sal­vador changed its laws last year to al­low tri­als in ab­sen­tia.

Pros­e­cu­tors had ac­cused Fu­nes of il­lic­it as­so­ci­a­tion and fail­ure to per­form his du­ties for the gang truce ne­go­ti­at­ed in 2012. Fu­nes had de­nied ne­go­ti­at­ing with the gangs or giv­ing their lead­ers any priv­i­leges.

Fu­nes’ for­mer Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gen. David Munguía Payes was sen­tenced to 18 years in prison for his in­volve­ment in the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Munguía Payes said af­ter the sen­tenc­ing that the tri­al was full of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

“I con­sid­er my­self a po­lit­i­cal pris­on­er, for on­ly hav­ing served as the ex-min­is­ter of Pres­i­dent Fu­nes. They ac­cuse me of a se­ries of ac­cu­sa­tions that have no foun­da­tion,” he said.

Fu­nes’ sen­tence was the sum of eight years for il­lic­it as­so­ci­a­tion and six years for fail­ure to per­form du­ties.

Fu­nes is the sec­ond for­mer Sal­vado­ran pres­i­dent sen­tenced to prison for il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion. In 2018, for­mer Pres­i­dent Tony Saca was sen­tenced to 10 years in prison af­ter plead­ing guilty to di­vert­ing more than $300 mil­lion in state funds. He was Fu­nes’ pre­de­ces­sor, gov­ern­ing from 2004 to 2009.

Pros­e­cu­tors say the gang ne­go­ti­a­tions were aimed at get­ting the coun­try’s pow­er­ful street gangs to low­er the homi­cide rate in ex­change for ben­e­fits to the gangs’ im­pris­oned lead­ers.

El Sal­vador has pur­sued Fu­nes, 64, who gov­erned from 2009 to 2014, for oth­er al­leged crimes in at least a half dozen cas­es. Nicaragua gave him cit­i­zen­ship in 2019.

In 2015, El Sal­vador’s Supreme Court ruled that the gangs are ter­ror­ist or­ga­ni­za­tions.

Cur­rent Pres­i­dent Nay­ib Bukele has been ac­cused of en­gag­ing in the same kind of ne­go­ti­a­tions with the gangs.

In De­cem­ber 2021, the U.S. Trea­sury said that Bukele’s gov­ern­ment se­cret­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed a truce with lead­ers of the coun­try’s pow­er­ful street gangs. Im­pris­oned gang lead­ers were al­leged­ly giv­en priv­i­leges in ex­change for slow­ing down killings and for giv­ing po­lit­i­cal sup­port to Bukele’s par­ty. Lo­cal news site El Faro had pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions.

For­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Raúl Melara had said at the time that he would in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tions, but when Bukele’s par­ty dom­i­nat­ed mid-term elec­tions and took con­trol of Con­gress, the new law­mak­ers oust­ed Melara.

The truce ap­par­ent­ly broke down when the gangs killed 62 peo­ple in a sin­gle day in March 2022. Bukele re­spond­ed by sus­pend­ing some fun­da­men­tal rights and wag­ing an all-out war against the gangs that car­ries on to­day.

SAN SAL­VADOR, El Sal­vador (AP)