MADRID 19 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A court in El Salvador this Monday sent the country’s former president Alfredo Cristiani, former deputy Rodolfo Parker and nine former soldiers to trial accused of the massacre of six Jesuits, five of them Spanish, and two Salvadoran women in 1989 during the civil war.
The judge of the Second Investigative Court of San Salvador has ordered that they go to trial for the crimes of murder, procedural fraud and concealment, according to the statements of the defense lawyer, Gabriel Solorzano, collected by the Salvadoran newspaper ‘El Mundo’.
Former president Cristiani – who led the country between 1989 and 1994 – and soldiers Juan Bustillo, Juan Orlando Zepeda, Rafael Larios, Nelson López López, Joaquín Cerna, Inocente Montano and Camilo Hernández are accused of murder. All but the latter are also accused of acts of terrorism.
Meanwhile, former deputy Rodolfo Parker and soldiers Manuel Rivas and Óscar Linares face the crimes of personal concealment and procedural fraud.
The judge has ratified the arrest warrant against former president Cristiani, former deputy Parker and former soldiers Joaquín Cerna, Juan Orlando Zepeda and Juan Bustillo, for not appearing in the trial, while maintaining conditional freedom for the remaining six defendants, although They must appear in court to sign once a month until the public hearing takes place.
The massacre took place in November 1989 on the campus of the Central American University in San Salvador, the country’s capital. Six Jesuits, five of them Spanish, were murdered, among them the ideologist of Liberation Theology Ignacio Ellacuría, as well as a domestic worker and her daughter.
The civil war left some 75,000 dead between 1989 and 1992. According to the UN, more than 80 percent of the crimes were committed by security forces.