Former El Salvador President Mauricio Funes who lived in exile in Nicaragua dies at 65

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Former El Salvador President Mauricio Funes, who spent the final years of his life in Nicaragua to avoid various criminal sentences, died late Tuesday. He was 65.

Nicaragua’s Health Ministry said in a statement that Funes had died of a serious chronic illness.

Funes governed El Salvador from 2009 to 2014. He lived his final nine years under the protection of Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega, whose government had given him citizenship, allowing him to avoid extradition.

Funes had pending sentences in El Salvador for corruption and making deals with the country’s powerful street gangs that amounted to more than 26 years, but he never set foot in prison.

The journalist-turned-politician came to power with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, the leftist party born of El Salvador’s civil war and a powerful national political force for three decades that was left with no seats in the Congress after last year’s election.