El Salvador prosecutors said ex-president approved 1989 massacre of Jesuits

By MARCOS ALEMAN
June 6, 2023

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Prosecutors in El Salvador say they have evidence that former President Alfredo Cristiani was present at a meeting that approved the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests and two others by soldiers.

Prosecutors who announced the case against Cristiani last year presented formal charges against the former president at an arraignment hearing late Monday, saying the plot to kill the Jesuits during the country’s 1980-1992 civil war went all the way to the top.

Cristiani, who left El Salvador in 2021 and whose whereabouts are unknown, has always denied knowledge of or involvement in the killings, which shocked the world. Prosecutors said that not only did Cristiani know about and approve the 1989 killings, he also held a phone call to reassure one of the priests before he was murdered.

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A general amnesty passed in 1993 during Cristiani’s administration had prevented pursuit of those involved in war crimes until it was repealed in 2016.

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On Nov. 16, 1989, an elite commando unit killed the six priests — five Spaniards and one Salvadoran — along with their housekeeper and the housekeeper’s daughter in the priests’ residence. The killers tried to make the massacre appear as though it had been carried out by leftist guerrillas.

More:
https://apnews.com/article/el-salvador-jesuits-massacre-civil-war-1989-69333406b5f259188d57d1734aa7a00a







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Screen Shot 2020-07-29 at 2.35.58 PM.pngJoeff DavisRose garden planted at the site of the 1989 murders. Photo by Joeff Davis

The Other Americans: Salvadoran Military Official on Trial for 1989 Killing of Jesuit Priests

The brutality was known by the Reagan and Bush administrations, but they lied to cover up the massacres for their own political gain.


BY JEFF ABBOTT JULY 30, 2020 8:00 AM

After more than three decades, human rights advocates in El Salvador and around the world, as well as the families of five Spanish Jesuit priests who were massacred by the Salvadoran military in November 1989, await the decision of a court in Madrid, Spain, against former Salvadoran Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano Morales, who is accused of planning the killings.

The trial, conducted on video due to COVID-19, began in June and came to an end on July 15. Colonel Montano served as vice minister of defense and public safety for the Salvadoran government during that country’s twelve-year civil war. He was one of seventeen people accused in Spain—the home country of five of the six murdered Jesuit priests—of planning the massacre. He was extradited from the United States in 2017. The trial in Madrid was held under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which permits human rights crimes committed in one country to be investigated and tried in another.

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Early on the morning of November 16, 1989, soldiers from the infamous Atlacatl battalion, a counter-insurgency battalion trained by the United States, invaded the campus of the Jesuit-run university in San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital city. The soldiers were given orders to “leave no witnesses.”

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During the massacre, soldiers also set fire to the rooms, burning images and paintings of Monseñor Romero, the Archbishop for San Salvador who was assassinated in 1980 after he had spoken out against the human rights violations carried out by the Salvadoran military. In October 2018, Monseñor Romero was declared a saint by the Catholic Church.

More:
https://progressive.org/latest/salvadoran-official-killing-jesuit-priests-abbott-200730/