August 22, 2025
On the night of March 24, 2025, Colombian authorities intercepted Mateo Sebastián Pintor Rodríguez, a Salvadoran man who was about to travel to Madrid from José María Córdova International Airport in Rionegro, Antioquia.
When Sebastián passed through immigration control, the system triggered a red alert issued by the authorities in El Salvador, who were seeking him on charges of fraud and extortion, according to statements to Caracol Televisión by Major Sergio Camacho, head of the Interpol Investigation Group in Colombia.
Red alerts are requests for the location and provisional detention of a person wanted by a member country of Interpol. While these notifications are not international arrest warrants, they serve as an official notice that the person is sought by justice for extradition and prosecution. Based on this notification, Colombian police arrested Sebastián.
Authorities accused Sebastián of being a Barrio 18 gang leader with the alias of “Tatuado” and of living an ostentatious lifestyle in the exclusive Poblado area of Medellín, paid for using money he earned illegally from his home country. Sebastián had allegedly demanded between $2,000 and $25,000 from the families of individuals incarcerated in El Salvador in exchange for promising the release of their loved ones.
The accusations against Sebastián were made amid El Salvador’s ruthless offensive against gangs, which was declared by President Nayib Bukele in March 2022. Since then, Bukele’s government has suspended constitutional guarantees, eradicated the right to legal defense, and increasingly carried out arbitrary detentions and human rights violations.
Since the beginning of Bukele’s anti-gang offensive, more than 85,000 people have been arrested, according to the National Civil Police (PNC) of El Salvador. This figure includes those who have completed their sentences and have been re-arrested upon their release from prisons.
There are currently more than 110,000 people in prison
Of those, 85,000 people were arrested since the state of exception began in March 2022 (the equivalent of 1.5% of the country’s population).
More than 350 people have died in El Salvador’s prisons.
The information labeling Sebastián as a gang member came from the Salvadoran government and has been taken as absolute truth and replicated by Colombian, Salvadoran, and regional media outlets.
However, InSight Crime analyzed dozens of judicial documents and other sources of information — including Sebastián’s academic background, life history, and tattoos — that indicate he is not affiliated with any gang, nor does he have any pending criminal charges.
Sebastián’s case reveals how the erosion of procedural guarantees in El Salvador has opened the door to the persecution of Salvadorans — even beyond the country’s borders — under false or manipulated charges. This persecution has also recently targeted human rights defenders, political opponents, and journalists seeking exile.
Fabricating a ‘Gang Member’
Sebastián was born in Jiquilisco, a city in southeast El Salvador, on March 3, 1996, and grew up in a middle-class home not far from gang-affiliated neighborhoods.
He studied until ninth grade at the public La Paz school and completed his high school education at another institution. He later took courses in English, computing, and automotive mechanics. In mid-July 2015, he started tattooing at a small shop called “Full Tinta-Body Art and Piercing” in the Miralvalle neighborhood, while occasionally helping his mother with a catering business.
Most of his days passed peacefully, but on September 19, 2016, his life took an unexpected turn.
Sebastián was returning from a party and stopped at a store around 1:00 a.m. to buy a Gatorade on his way home. According to a file from the Office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights, police officers raided the store after a noise complaint from neighbors. The police asked Sebastián to come out, but he refused, and the police proceeded to forcefully remove him, beating him for nearly 15 minutes. He was later arrested for resisting authority.
Sebastián reported two of the officers responsible for the assault, Eduardo Enrique Urrutia Guzmán and Alfonso Cortez Nerio, who were convicted for causing injuries to Sebastián, according to judicial documents that InSight Crime accessed.
After filing this complaint, Sebastián also stated that police officers intensified their threats against him.
“They told me to stop the complaints, or I’d see what would happen, because if I messed with the system, the system would either kill me or leave me in prison,” read his statements in the judicial file.
At that point, Sebastián’s ordeal was just beginning.
Six months after the incident, a supposed businessman presented himself to the anti-extortion unit of the PNC and claimed to be a victim of extortion by a man named Mateo Sebastián Pintor Rodríguez. According to the judicial documents, the complainant stated that he had given Sebastián around $25,000 since October 2013, and on March 6, 2017 — when he decided to file the complaint — he received another demand: to meet at the San Luis mall to give Sebastián $100.
That same day, a group of police officers staked out the restaurant in the mall where the businessman and Sebastián met. The two men spoke briefly, and after handing over the money, they said goodbye with a hug. After the businessman left, the police stopped Sebastián and found he was carrying five bills totaling $100. The officers recorded the serial numbers of the bills and allowed him to continue on his way.
The officers later compared a copy of the bills’ serial numbers to those the businessman had given them before meeting Sebastián. After confirming that the numbers matched and analyzing the photos taken during the operation, they arrested Sebastián on March 30, 2017, for the crime of aggravated extortion and sent him to the prison in his hometown, Zacamil.
The businessman had told the police that Sebastián was a member of the Barrio 18 gang. What he didn’t tell them was that Sebastián was actually his ex-lover.
When Sebastián told his version of the story before the First Sentencing Court of San Salvador, he said that the businessman who had accused him of extortion was his former partner, Horacio Turcios Bonilla, which documents from the case confirmed. Sebastián also claimed that the incident for which he was arrested and imprisoned was a set up orchestrated by Horacio.
Horacio was, in fact, not a businessman but a divorcee who worked for the Ministry of Justice and Security and was considered a “distinguished figure in society.” In 2009, he began a romantic relationship with Sebastián’s grandmother, Ana Elizabeth Rodríguez Umaña. Though things did not work out between them, Horacio remained a close family friend and soon began to develop a bond with Sebastián, who spent most of his time at his grandmother’s house.
Horacio, who was 44 years older than Sebastián, began giving him all sorts of gifts, from money to his first cellphone.
“He started to win him over with gifts,” said Frania Pintor Rodríguez, Sebastián’s mother, to InSight Crime. She said her mother did not mind the gifts because Sebastián kept up with his studies. “It was a blessing because she couldn’t buy these things, and neither could I,” she said.
Frania did not mind the gifts either and said she never suspected that Horacio had anything other than paternal affection for Sebastián. But Horacio and Sebastián began spending time together beyond Frania and Ana’s gaze, and eventually, they began a romantic relationship.
When they met at the San Luis mall that March day, their relationship had already ended. It was a tense moment between them because Sebastián had refused to participate in what court documents called the “self-theft of a vehicle” that Horacio organized in 2016. Sebastián said that because he had refused, Horacio had set him up, out of revenge.
Sebastián also told the court that he had agreed to meet Horacio at the mall that day because his ex-partner was going to lend him a vehicle registration card for a car he would use to celebrate his birthday.
In the Hands of the Police
Frania, who was a police officer at the time, visited Sebastián shortly after his arrest and noticed that her son had difficulty walking and sitting. Sebastián told her that police officers had beaten him in the abdomen, back, and both knees. He also said they had shocked him with two electric devices and threatened to kill or rape him for denouncing members of the national police, as detailed in a complaint Frania filed with the Office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights in April that same year.
Sebastián’s injuries following a beating he got from the police. Photos courtesy of his mother Frania. .
InSight Crime was able to access videos showing Sebastián’s deplorable health conditions.
Seeing Sebastián in that state, Frania embarked on a fight to bring her son justice and made an official request to the Office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights to verify his condition. After the first inspection by the entity’s personnel in April, Sebastián was transferred to another building, where he could finally rest.
Sebastián gradually recovered from his injuries, and during the following months — as his judicial process continued — he received several visits from the Office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights. After each meeting, the entity’s representatives drafted records documenting Sebastián’s situation, some of which described circumstances incompatible with the profile of a gang member.
Sebastián walking with difficulty and in handcuffs at the tribunal. Video sent to InSight Crime by Frania.
For example, in a record dated January 2018, it was noted that Sebastián was “housed in a cell with individuals who did not belong to gangs.” At that time, it was unthinkable to lock up a gang member with civilians, as gang members were supposed to be placed in cells with other gang members. But this was not the case with Sebastián.
In mid-April 2018, the Second Sentencing Court of San Salvador issued a 15-year prison sentence for Sebastián for aggravated extortion. But after an appeal in September that same year, the Third Court ruled that the provisional detention against him was to be annulled and ordered Sebastián’s immediate release.
Sebastián returned home, but the police harassment continued.
In July 2019, he was arrested again — this time for not having any documentation proving his legitimate ownership of the cellphone he was carrying during an inspection. Two days later, after providing copies of the receipt for the phone, Sebastián regained his freedom.
Meanwhile, the trial for Sebastián’s alleged extortion case was still ongoing. In February 2021, after analyzing all the evidence Sebastián had provided, the court definitively declared that he was not criminally or civilly responsible for the crime of aggravated extortion. The judge also noted that the investigation had revealed many inconsistencies and urged the prosecution to investigate possible procedural fraud.
The State of Emergency Sets Its Sights on Sebastián
In March 2022, Bukele implemented the first state of emergency in El Salvador, which relaxed the rules for arrests and led to the capture of thousands of suspected gang members. One month later, at the end of April, the state of emergency crackdown targeted Sebastián. This time, it was for the crime of illegal association, in other words, for being a gang member.
According to a complaint Frania filed after the events, officers from the PNC’s Tactical Operations Section claimed to have consulted their records and found that Sebastián had a criminal history and ties to criminal structures. They labeled him as a member of the Revolucionarios faction of Barrio 18 and gave him the nickname “Tatuado,” despite his having been acquitted by the Salvadoran courts.
Sebastián has at least a dozen tattoos across his neck, back, abdomen, and arms. He has a bird with an anchor, an owl with a candle, a spiked heart, a mermaid, a large skull on his back, and the word “libertad” (freedom) on his jaw. However, none of these tattoos feature the numbers 18 or 666, the word “dieciocho,” or any other symbol indicating affiliation with the Barrio 18 gang.
There is also no indication in the press or police intelligence files suggesting Sebastián is a gang member. In the more than four terabytes of documents from the PNC leaked by the hacker-activist group Guacamaya Leaks, Sebastián is not mentioned in any email or document with this profile.
Still, Sebastián was once again locked up under the state of emergency and suffered severe beatings by police officers.
“He came out vomiting blood,” said Frania.
He spent two months and 15 days in the Mariona prison, the largest in San Salvador. He managed to get out with the legal support of a lawyer from the José Simeón Cañas Central American University (Universidad Centroamericana – UCA) on June 12, 2022. The UCA also housed Sebastián in a hotel for three months to keep him safe and prevent the police from re-arresting him arbitrarily.
Frania told InSight Crime that she suspects the years of persecution against Sebastián are part of a vendetta against her that dates back to her time in the PNC. In a complaint she filed with the Office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights at the end of 2022, she alleged that she had been harassed by police colleagues for years, a situation that escalated until she received death threats against herself and her family from Sub-inspector Néstor Alexis González Sánchez, known as “Vinicio.” In the complaint, Frania also stated that Vinicio had forced her to resign from the PNC.
After the incessant police harassment and Sebastián’s arrest under the state of emergency, Frania and Sebastián decided to leave El Salvador.
As soon as they managed to save some money, Sebastián, his mother, and his brother fled to Honduras in September 2022. The plan was to travel from there to Spain, but they did not have enough money for everyone to travel right away, so Sebastián would join them later.
Sebastián with his partner in Medellín. Photo sent by his mother Frania to InSight Crime.
Captured in Colombia
While gathering more money to make his way to Spain, Sebastián decided to travel from Honduras to Colombia on December 30, 2022, because life in Colombia was cheaper, and he had an old friend in Medellín who could help him out. Through his friend, Sebastián met a wealthy man with whom he began a relationship, and after some time, they started living together.
Months turned into years, but the day finally came for Sebastián to travel to Spain to reunite with his mother and brother. But on March 24, 2025, due to the Interpol red alert, Sebastián was detained before he could depart.
On the day of his arrest, he was carrying a Colombian identification document. Frania told InSight Crime that Sebastián had been decided to obtain a Colombian ID in hopes of avoiding further persecution by Salvadoran authorities.
Colombian authorities based Sebastián’s case on the Interpol red notice and the bulletin reporting his 15-year sentence for extortion in April 2018, even though Salvadoran justice had acquitted him of all charges.
Since his arrest, media outlets have distorted Sebastián’s story. They claimed he was a Barrio 18 gang member, posing as a businessman in the tourism sector, which he used as a front for the criminal income he supposedly obtained through his alleged gang affiliation in El Salvador. The media also began to spread details about the luxurious life Sebastián led in Poblado, Medellín, in an attempt to suggest that his luxuries came from extortion, when this lavish lifestyle was funded by his partner’s money.
The media’s assumption that Sebastián’s luxuries came from extortion is also questionable because there is no other example of a gang member becoming a millionaire off extortion in El Salvador, and under Bukele’s anti-gang offensive, extortions in El Salvador have practically ceased. It is also strange that Sebastián has an international arrest warrant against him since he was cleared of any charges under the state of emergency in 2022.
International Persecution
Sebastián’s case is far from an isolated incident. Under the state of emergency, El Salvador has issued many Interpol red alerts that have led to the capture of dozens of suspected Salvadoran gang members in countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, the United States, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Spain.
Since the state of emergency began, 1,556 alleged gang members “have been detained abroad and subsequently returned,” according to a May 2025 study by the PNC’s Division of Analysis and Intelligence.
Of these countries, only Spain has refused to deport a suspected gang member back to El Salvador due to the high risk of human rights violations there.
While red alerts operate within the framework of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and their statute prohibits interference in political matters, these principles do not seem to have been respected in Sebastián’s case, nor in the cases of other Salvadorans accused under the state of emergency.
Though many of the targets are indeed gang members or former gang members, El Salvador’s international persecution has also become a threat to those fleeing political persecution, including human rights defenders and journalists.
The number of entries in Interpol’s red alert search engine acts as a barometer of the extent of international persecution by Bukele’s government. El Salvador has more than 800 entries in circulation, four times more than Argentina, the country with the second highest number of red notices in the region. However, not all notifications are made public, as with Sebastián’s case, so the number of cases — and amount of persecution — is likely much higher.
Sebastián is currently incarcerated at “La Picota” prison in the Colombian capital, Bogotá, alongside drug traffickers wanted for extradition. In August, InSight Crime was able to briefly speak with him about his current situation.
“In the Bogotá prison, things are uncertain; you never know what the day might bring. Some leave, others arrive. I’m waiting to see what happens regarding the possibility of extradition,” Sebastián said.
Sebastián also took the opportunity to defend his stance and reiterate that he is not a gang member.
“I am not a gang member because I chose a different path for my life. People are not gang members by nature. Often, they end up in that situation due to social pressure, economic need, a search for identity or protection, or simply due to a lack of alternatives,” he said. “Unlike them, I have life goals, values, and principles. I completely reject violence.”
Meanwhile, Frania is anxious and desperate. No nonprofit organization has agreed to take Sebastián’s case due to its ties to Salvadoran gangs. The Colombian justice system has not provided her with a public defender, and the few lawyers she has contacted have demanded absurd amounts of money.
To make matters worse, her mother, Ana, was arrested on August 14, 2024, for alleged gang ties.
Frania has not heard from her mother since that day.