Former Salvadoran President Facing Trial Goes into Coma

Francisco Flores, who served as president of El Salvador from 1999 to 2004, suffered a stroke and is now in a coma, his lawyers reported Monday.

The former president was taken from his home, where he is under house arrest, to hospital at approximately 7 p.m. local time after he was apparently found unconscious by his daughter.

A senior police official said he was transported in a private vehicle instead of an ambulance.

“He was unconscious but with vital signs when he was transported,” Jose Cisneros, head of the police anti-riot division, told La Prensa Grafica.

His lawyers said that the stroke left him paralyzed “from his head to his feet” but the claims had not been substantiated by physicians at the hospital.

Flores has been receiving treatment for thrombosis — the clotting of the blood in the circulatory system — since November 2014.

He was formally accused last year of diverting at least US$15 million from a Taiwanese donation intended for earthquake relief to his party's electoral campaign.

RELATED: Salvadoran Former President to Face Trial for Embezzlement

The trial was set to begin Jan. 18, 2016. but was postponed to an unspecified date by the courts on Jan. 7 after the Attorney General of the Republic failed to secure the presence of witnesses that now find themselves in Costa Rica.

Flores was previously hospitalized in October 2015 to receive treatment for a thrombosis in his right leg. He was returned to prison after 19 days in hospital.

The former president was relocated from a high-security prison to a luxury residential area in December 2015, after an appeals court judge dropped charges of money laundering against him.

The decision to place him under house arrest was met with widespread criticism.