Top Former Military Officers Arrested for 1982 Murder of Four Dutch Journalists
Monday, October 17, 2022
Gabriela Cáceres, María Luz Nóchez y Carlos Dada
Leer en español
General Guillermo García, the minister of defense and strongman of the Salvadoran Army in the early 1980s, has been detained for his alleged responsibility in the murder of four Dutch journalists in 1982, members of the judicial branch involved in the case and two relatives of the victims confirmed to El Faro. Also arrested was Colonel Francisco Antonio Morán, the former director of the defunct Treasury Police, a fearsome security force tied to massacres, enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial activities attributed to death squads.
The arrests were ordered on October 13 by Judge María Mercedes Argüello of the trial court in Dulce Nombre de María, Chalatenango, after finding sufficient grounds for the accused officers to face trial for the murder of Jacobus Andries Koster, Jan Cornelius Kuiper, Hans Ter Laag, and Johannes Jan Willemsen, Dutch journalists ambushed and executed by the Salvadoran Army on Mar. 17, 1982, in rural Chalatenango.
General García and Colonel Morán were detained in the early hours of Friday, October 14, in their homes in San Salvador. Their first hearing was set for Monday, October 17.
The court also ordered the arrests of Colonel Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, former commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade of El Paraíso; Colonel Rafael Flores Lima, ex-chief of the Joint General Staff; and Sergeant Mario Canizales Espinoza, of the Atonal Battalion.
The warrant states that the Attorney General’s Office requested the detentions for the crime of homicide as defined in the Penal Code of 1973/74, no longer in effect but applicable in this case. It is the same statute used in the El Mozote massacre case, opened in 2016 by the court in San Francisco Gotera, Morazán. The preliminary investigation into the murders found that Colonels Reyes Mena and Morán and Sergeant Canizales Espinoza were the direct authors of the crime, whereas General García and Colonel Flores Lima stand accused of omission.
More:
https://elfaro.net/en/202210/el_salvador/26431/Top-Former-Military-Officers-Arrested-for-1982-Murder-of-Four-Dutch-Journalists.htm
General Guillermo García
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Walk down memory lane:
Florida no longer safe haven for war criminals as US prosecutors take action
This article is more than 7 years old
Accused human rights abuser Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, 77, moves closer to deportation in likely precedent for future cases in Sunshine State
Richard Luscombe in Miami
@richlusc
Mon 23 Mar 2015 07.00 EDT
As one of an estimated 3.6 million senior citizens living in Florida, Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova found the perfect place to hide in plain sight. From shopping trips with his wife Lourdes in the upscale malls of Daytona Beach to gourmet meals at popular restaurants, he appeared to be just another septuagenerian enjoying the good life in the country’s favourite retirement playground.
Vides, however, was guarding a secret. The smartly dressed pensioner was once an army general and defence minister in El Salvador during a bloody 12-year civil war in the 1980s, and he stands accused of covering up a series of atrocities, including the rape and murder of four American churchwomen.
The former Cold War ally of the US had been quietly welcomed in as a lawful permanent resident in 1989, seen as a friend to the conservative Reagan and Bush adminstrations in an era of leftist insurgency in several south and central American countries.
Now, partly due to the shift in attitudes by Barack Obama’s White House toward the pursuit of war criminals, Vides, 77, is a pariah. He suffered a significant blow to his hopes of remaining in Florida last week when a strongly worded ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals confirmed a 2012 federal court decision ordering his deportation (pdf).
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/23/florida-safe-haven-war-criminals-federal-prosecutors
(Arrests of fiendish Latin American war criminals "hiding" in Florida are still made regularly.)