El Salvador police chief, accused embezzler among 9 killed in helicopter crash

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) -The head of El Salvador's police force and a man arrested on charges of a multi-million-dollar embezzlement were among the nine people killed when the military helicopter in which they were travelling crashed, authorities said on Monday.

Police Director Mauricio Arriaza was escorting the former head of a credit union, Manuel Coto, back to El Salvador when their helicopter went down in the Pasaquina district in the southeast of El Salvador near the border with Honduras on Sunday evening.

Coto, who was accused of embezzling $35 million, had been arrested earlier on Sunday in Honduras after attempting to flee to the United States. He was subsequently handed over to Salvadoran police.

The seven other people who died in the crash included three police officers, three servicemen and a justice ministry employee, according to the military and the ministry.

Authorities did not immediately say what may have caused the crash, but President Nayib Bukele called for an investigation in a post on X.

"What happened cannot remain a simple 'accident,'" he wrote.

He later declared a three-day national mourning period "to show the solidarity of the Salvadoran people with the deceased," he said in a separate X post.

Bukele appointed Arriaza in 2019 to head up the national police. Arriaza had helped lead a nationwide crackdown on gangs that has driven down the country's homicide rate, but has also drawn criticism from human rights groups for the campaign's arbitrary arrests.

In 2022, Human Rights Watch called on other countries to impose travel bans and asset freezes against a series of high-level Salvadoran officials, including Arriaza, saying that while he was at the helm the national police "has been responsible for widespread human rights violation."

(Reporting by Nelson Renteria; Writing by Natalia Siniawski and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Sandra Maler)