Former Salvadoran Military Officers Convicted for 1982 Murder of Dutch Journalists
Three former high-ranking Salvadoran military officers have been convicted for the 1982 killing of four Dutch journalists during El Salvador’s civil war, a landmark decision in one of the country’s most notorious wartime atrocities.
A jury in the northern city of Chalatenango found Colonel Jose Guillermo Garcia, 91, Colonel Francisco Moran, 93, and Colonel Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, 85, guilty of orchestrating the killings. All three men were sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison, according to lawyers involved in the case.
The victims — Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Hans ter Laag, and Joop Willemsen — were working on a documentary about the civil war and had embedded themselves with leftist guerrilla fighters when they were ambushed by Salvadoran troops. The soldiers opened fire with assault rifles and machine guns, killing the journalists and several rebels.
The verdict marks a significant milestone in the long quest for justice surrounding the war, which claimed more than 75,000 lives, mostly at the hands of U.S.-backed government forces between 1980 and 1992.
“This is a case that exposed the coordinated power structure behind military and political decisions during the war,” said Oscar Perez, an attorney with the Foundation Comunicandonos, which represents the victims’ families. “We have clearly shown the level of responsibility of the accused.”
A 1993 UN Truth Commission concluded that the ambush was planned by Colonel Reyes Mena and carried out with the knowledge of top-ranking officers. Despite this, it took decades for the case to reach a courtroom. A general amnesty passed after the war initially shielded the perpetrators from prosecution, but in 2018, El Salvador’s Supreme Court ruled the amnesty law unconstitutional, reopening the door to trials for wartime abuses.
García and Moran are reportedly under police surveillance at a private hospital in San Salvador due to their advanced age. Reyes, believed to be residing in the United States, was the alleged mastermind behind the ambush. El Salvador’s Supreme Court approved an extradition request for him in March, but no progress has been reported on his return.
García, a former Minister of National Defence, was deported from the U.S. in 2016 after a U.S. immigration judge found him responsible for gross human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial killings.
The trial gained renewed momentum in March 2022, when victims’ relatives, the Dutch government, and European Union officials formally demanded that those responsible for the killings be held accountable.
The Diario El Salvador newspaper first reported the sentences, noting that none of the convicted officers were present in court when the verdict was announced.
With input from Al Jazeera, The Associated Press
