After four years on the run, a senior leader of MS-13, one of the largest transnational criminal organizations, was captured this month in Southern California on terrorism charges, court documents reveal.
Freddy Ivan Jandres-Parada, accused by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York in December 2020 of being a member of MS-13’s board of directors, known as the Ranfla Nacional, was apprehended on March 7 in San Diego by the FBI.
Jandres-Parada, along with a dozen other MS-13 members, faces charges of material support of terrorism and narco-terrorism. The indictment alleges that the group engaged in military-style training camps, obtained weapons, and directed acts of violence and murder in El Salvador, the United States, and elsewhere.
As a member of the Ranfla Nacional, Jandres-Parada and others allegedly controlled MS-13 activities, including approving murders, assaults, kidnappings, extortion, drug trafficking, and other criminal activities.
The MS-13 gang, established in the 1980s in the US by Central American immigrants in Southern California, has a history of extreme violence, including severing fingers of rivals with machetes, brutal killings, rapes, assaults, and other crimes.
According to a 2008 FBI Threat Assessment, MS-13 members have committed heinous acts, leading to their dispersal into local neighborhood groups or 'cliques.' Many members were deported to Central American countries, where MS-13 membership expanded into tens of thousands.
Despite deportations, many members returned to the US, often illegally, and re-joined MS-13 cliques that had expanded to dozens of states, including New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, Texas, California, and Nevada.
In New York, a dozen alleged MS-13 members were indicted in 2017, charged in seven murders on Long Island spanning three years, including the deaths of three high school students in 2016.
Jandres-Parada is currently held at the federal jail in San Diego and will be transferred to federal custody in New York to await trial.
