MASSACRE CASE FILED AGAINST EX-SALVADOR PRESIDENT
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LD105134.htm

Source: Reuters
13 Nov 2008 14:20:58 GMT
By Jason Webb

MADRID, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Human rights groups on Thursday filed a
criminal case in a Spanish court against former Salvadoran President
Alfredo Cristiani for trying to protect the murderers of six Jesuit
priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in 1989.

The case also calls for the Spanish High Court to press criminal
charges against 14 former Salvadoran army officers and soldiers for
the massacre, one of the most notorious in the country's bloody war
from 1980-92, the two rights groups said.

"At the time of the massacre, Alfredo Cristiani Burkard was the
president of El Salvador and the Commander in Chief of the Armed
Forces. According to the complaint, he played an active role covering
up the crime and obstructing the subsequent investigation," read a
summary of the case provided by the San Francisco-based Center for
Justice and Accountability and the Spanish Association for Human
Rights.

A High Court judge must now decide whether to accept the case and
press charges against the men, who in their own country would be
protected by an Amnesty Law protecting former participants in El
Salvador's conflict.

Spanish judges, arguing that human rights crimes can be prosecuted
anywhere, have in recent years pursued high-profile cases against
rights abusers who have escaped prosecution at home, including
Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet, who narrowly avoided
extradition to Spain in 2000.

The case alleges that one of the accused, Gen. Rene Emilio Ponce,
ordered the killing of Spanish-born Jesuit priest Ignacio Ellacuria,
who had blamed social injustice for the country's ills and called for
a negotiated end to the conflict. Ponce ordered his men to leave no
witness alive, it said.

In the early hours of Nov. 16, 1989, according to a United-Nations-
sponsored Truth Commission, a group of soldiers entered the campus of
the Central American University where Ellacuria was rector and made
their way to its pastoral centre.

They ordered Ellacuria and five other Jesuit priests to lie face down
on the ground and shot them. They also killed the priests'
housekeeper and her 13-year-old daughter. The soldiers then left a
note claiming the murders were carried out by left-wing FMLN
guerrillas.

The killings, like the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and
the rape and murder of a group of American nuns in 1980, attracted
wide international publicity and put pressure on the Salvadoran
government.

The war ended in 1992. After a criminal investigation, two army
officers were convicted for the Jesuit murders and jailed, although
they were released after the Amnesty Law was passed in 1993.
(Reporting by Jason Webb; Editing by Angus MacSwan)