A court in El Salvador has ruled to bring a former president and retired military officials to trial for their alleged roles in the prominent murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter during the country’s civil war 35 years ago.
The former president Alfredo Cristiani, a former congressman and nine retired military officials are charged with murder and acts of terrorism over one of the most notorious crimes committed during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war, which left 75,000 civilians dead and only formally ended in 1992.
Cristiani’s whereabouts are unknown. The defendants include the former congressman Rodolfo Parker and the retired military officials Oscar León and Manuel Rivas, who are also accused of alleged procedural fraud and personal cover-up.
“We are now heading to trial, and in that phase, we aim to prove that we truly have nothing to do with this,” León told reporters upon learning of the decision late on Monday.
In November 1989, a military commando stormed the Jesuit Central American University (Uca) campus, killing its rector, the Spanish priest Ignacio Ellacuría, five of his colleagues – Ignacio Martín Baró, Segundo Montes, Juan Ramón Moreno, Joaquín López y López, Amando López, along with Elba and Celina Ramos.
The attack was orchestrated by senior military commanders who targeted Father Ellacuría in an attempt to derail peace talks. But the atrocity provoked such widespread international condemnation that it eventually helped push the US to end its support for El Salvador’s military regime.
The civil war between El Salvador’s government and the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front guerrillas lasted from 1980 to 1992 and resulted in about 75,000 deaths and 8,000 disappearances.
