Published on
04/06/2025 – 11:44 GMT+2
A court docket in El Salvador has sentenced 3 former senior army officials to fifteen years in jail for the killing of 4 Dutch reporters in 1982.
Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag and Joop Willemson had been killed in an ambush via the Salvadoran military within the northern province of Chalatenango whilst filming a documentary in regards to the Central American nation’s civil struggle, which lasted from 1980 till 1992.
Late on Tuesday, a five-person jury in a Chalatenango court docket discovered 3 former best army officers responsible over their deaths after an ordeal that was once closed to the general public.
The convicted males had been former Defence Minister José Guillermo García, 91, former Treasury Police Director Francisco Morán, 93, and Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, 85, the previous military commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade in Chalatenango.
García and Morán stay below a police guard at a personal medical institution within the capital San Salvador, whilst Reyes Mena lives in america. The Salvadoran Supreme Court began extradition complaints in March to convey him again to stand justice.
García was once deported from america in 2016, with a US pass judgement on pointing out him answerable for severe human rights violations all through the Salvadoran civil struggle.
Óscar Pérez, attorney for the Foundation Comunicandonos that represented the sufferers’ households, mentioned prosecutors had asked a minimal 15-year jail sentence for all 3 males.
What came about in 1982?
Shortly earlier than they had been killed, the 4 Dutch journalists, who had been creating a documentary for Ikon TV, had joined up with guerrillas to movie in the back of enemy traces.
Salvadoran squaddies armed with attack rifles and system weapons then ambushed them and the guerrillas.
Pérez informed journalists that there was once “sufficient proof” that “deliberate and well-planned military action” ended in the Dutch reporters’ killings. The similar overview was once additionally made via the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador after the tip of the civil struggle.
The attorney added that the pass judgement on within the case additionally condemned the Salvadoran govt, ordering President Nayib Bukele to apologise publicly to the sufferers in his position as head of the rustic’s military.
Juan Carlos Sánchez, from the NGO Mesa Contra l. a. Impunidad, mentioned the trial was once a “transcendental step that the victims have waited 40 years for”.
The prosecution of the army officers was once relaunched in 2018, after the rustic’s absolute best court docket dominated that the overall post-civil struggle amnesty was once unconstitutional.
In March 2022, family members of the sufferers in addition to representatives of the Dutch govt and the EU demanded that the suspects be attempted.
Some of the lads accused of being concerned within the killings had already died, together with Mario Canizales Espinoza, who was once believed to have led the patrol that performed the bloodbath.
Some 75,000 Salvadoran civilians had been killed all through the civil struggle, maximum of whom died by the hands of the US-backed govt safety forces.
Additional assets • AP
