Justice, Finally, for a War Crime in El Salvador
A Spanish court has convicted one perpetrator of the 1989 murder of Jesuit priests—but El Salvador itself is a long way from mounting a credible prosecution.
By Kate Doyle
On November 16, 2019, a procession marks the 30th anniversary of the murder of six Jesuit priests and two others in San Salvador. (Marvin Recinos / AFP via Getty Images)
When the decision dropped this month, it came through the small screen but with a huge impact.
On September 11, a mostly empty Spanish National Court livestreamed its verdict in the trial of a retired Salvadoran military officer for one of the most grievous atrocities of the Central American dirty wars: the 1989 assassination in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter. The panel of three Spanish judges found former colonel Inocente Orlando Montano guilty on five counts of “murder of a terrorist nature” and sentenced him to 133 years in prison.
Montano, 77 and wheelchair-bound, fidgeted behind plastic dividers meant to keep him safe from Covid-19 as the ruling was read. In the courtroom with him were the magistrates, prosecutors, his defense lawyers, and a smattering of journalists allowed to observe from a distance. But most of those affected by the crime—the Salvadorans, including students, staff, and faculty of the Jesuit-run Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador, where the six priests and two women were woken from sleep by soldiers on the morning of November 16, 1989, and shot execution-style—watched on phones and laptops from thousands of miles away.
The ruling is a triumph for the many who fought for justice in a case that seemed to founder from the moment the bodies were found. Evidence disappeared, documents were burned, testimony was falsified. Even after El Salvador convicted two army officers widely seen as scapegoats, tried in a sham proceeding in 1991, an amnesty law passed 18 months later quickly led to their release. They served less than two years in prison.
More:
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/war-crime-el-salvador/
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Inocente Orlando Montano
Salvadoran Colonel Who Lived For Years In Everett Extradited To Spain In 1989 Jesuit Priest Murders
Updated November 30, 2017
Lisa Creamer
A man who lived for years in Everett has been extradited to Spain and faces charges in connection with the 1989 murders of five Spanish Jesuit priests in El Salvador, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.
Inocente Orlando Montano Morales, a 74-year-old former colonel in the Salvadoran army, is one of 20 military officials indicted in Spain in the murders connected to the small South American nation's 10-year civil war, according to a statement released by the department.
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In March of 2011, an arrest warrant for Montano Morales was issued by a Spanish magistrate judge, the statement said. Four years later, the Justice Department said it filed a complaint in a district court in North Carolina seeking his extradition to Spain.
The complaint alleged that, in addition to the five Spanish victims, three others — all Salvadorans — were among those murdered at the Universidad Centroamericana: another Jesuit priest, a housekeeper and the housekeeper's 16-year-old daughter, the statement said. A magistrate judge ruled in February 2016 that Montano Morales could be extradited.
The statement explains:
[Montano Morales] shared oversight responsibility over a government radio station that, days before the massacre, issued threats urging the murder of the Jesuit priests. The day before the murders, Montano also allegedly participated in a series of meetings during which one of his fellow officers gave the order to kill the leader of the Jesuits and leave no witnesses.
“Today’s extradition demonstrates our firm commitment to honoring our obligations under extradition treaties," Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan said in a statement. "As a result, an alleged human-rights violator will now face justice in Spain.”
Former Massachusetts Congressman Joseph Moakley, along with his then-aide, Congressman Jim McGovern, were part of an investigation in 1990 that concluded the Salvadoran army was responsible for the murders.
More:
https://www.wbur.org/news/2017/11/29/inocente-orlando-montano-morales-extradition
(Hooray for these excellent Democratic Congressmen.)