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Pedro Antonio Jiménez De León (centre). (FGR @PrensaFgr on Twitter )
El Salvador's national prosecutor's office arrested an evangelical pastor Tuesday for allegedly having ties to a criminal gang, charging him with belonging to a terrorist organization.
The Life Unit of the prosecutor's office said it ordered the arrest of the Rev. Pedro Antonio Jimenez de Leon and 28 alleged members of Mara Salvatrucha, one of El Salvador's two major gangs that operate in the historic central district of the capital.
The office said Jimenez and others worked street corners carrying Bibles and collected extortion money, pretending it was church offerings as a front for the gang.
It wasn't known if Jimenez is an ordained pastor, and the prosecutor's office did not identify his church.
The Christian Mission Evangelical Church, El Salvador's largest evangelical church, said it had never heard of Jimenez, nor had the Evangelical Protestant Church. But the Central American country has at least 1,000 evangelical churches, most of them very small neighborhood worship centers.
El Salvador recently designated Mara Salvatrucha and the 18th Street Gang as terrorist organizations. Warfare between gangs and with the government has pushed the country's homicide rates to civil war levels.
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