Suspects in assassination of
Jesuits in El Salvador go on trial
 |
| Fr. Ignacio Ellacuria SJ |
The trial for the suspects in the murder of eight people
(six Jesuits and two lay collaborators) on 16 November 1989 begins on Monday in
Spain.
By Fr. Benedict Mayaki, SJ
More than 30 years after the assassination of six Jesuits
and two of their collaborators in El Salvador, those accused of planning the
murders are going on trial on Monday in Madrid, Spain. The trial begins at
15:00 (Madrid time) and will be broadcast live.
Five of the murdered priests were Spaniards. The trial is
taking place in Spain under the principle of "universal
jurisdiction", which allows human rights crimes committed in one country
to be tried in another.
Spanish prosecutors allege that the principal defendant,
Innocent Orlando Montano, an ex-Salvadorian colonel and a former soldier,
Yusshy René Mendoza, took part in the “decision, design and execution” of the
murders.
Welcoming news of the trial, the Director of the Human
Rights Institute of the Central American University (UCA) and former provincial
of the Central American Jesuits, Father José María Tojeira, SJ, said that it is
“good news for justice.” He added that it “strengthens the pending case” of the
murder of six Jesuit intellectuals and their two collaborators.
16 November 1989
Nearly thirty-one years ago, in the early hours of 16
November 1989, soldiers from the Atlacatl Battalion entered the campus of the
UCA and murdered Jesuit Fathers Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Amando
López, Juan Ramón Moreno, and Segundo Montes, all Spaniards; and Joaquín López
y López, the only Salvadorean. The soldiers also killed Julia Elba Ramos, the
wife of the caretaker at the UCA and a collaborator of the Jesuits, and her
fifteen-year-old daughter, Celina.
The attack at the UCA was allegedly planned and authorized
by senior military personnel in an attempt to derail peace talks aimed at
ending the country’s civil war.
The long road to justice
Father Tojeira remembers that it took almost a month and a
half of confronting the Salvadoran government before it accepted responsibility
for the actions of the soldiers.
The initial trials, which took place between 1989 and 1992
in El Salvador, ended with the acquittal of the perpetrators of the
crime.
However, in 1993, the Truth Commission created to
investigate the crimes committed during the country’s twelve-year civil war,
divulged the names of five senior officers involved in authorizing the
assassination. Among them was Colonel Montano, the vice-minister of public
security at the time of the killings.
Soon after, the Legislative Assembly passed a general
amnesty law covering all crimes committed during the war.
Reopening the Case
In 1999, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of
the Organization of American States (OAS) asked El Salvador to reopen the case
but the request was refused by the then-President, Francisco Guillermo Flores.
One year later, the Jesuits filed a complaint with the
Attorney General’s Office accusing the officials named by the Truth Commission
as the masterminds behind the murders. The complaint also involved former
president Alfredo Christiani and former Minister of Defense, General Larios,
who were both accused of involvement by the omission of their duty to protect.
The complaint was dismissed on grounds of the amnesty law that had been passed
earlier.
After failing at these attempts to obtain justice, the case
was moved to the Spanish courts at the request of some relatives of the
assassinated Jesuits.
Father Tojeira remarks that great headway was made in 2017
with the extradition of Colonel Montano to Spain from the United States where
he had been detained. “The opening of the trial in Spain was an important step
not only for the Jesuit case, but also for the revision of the amnesty law
which was declared unconstitutional in 2016,” Father Tojeira said.
Finally, in 2017, the case was reopened after a judge ruled
to declare the dismissal in 2000 null and void. Father Tojeira added that this
was “after many and repeated appeals by the defense of the soldiers implicated”
in the assassinations.
Father Tojeira said that “the insistence on following up on
the case during these thirty-one years is to prevent the repetition of events
like this.” He added that despite “knowing that impunity offers no guarantee
that crimes against humanity will not be repeated, any effort to bring the
alleged perpetrators of crimes to justice contributes to guaranteeing
non-repetition of those crimes.”
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