Former Salvadoran army officers convicted in 1982 killing of 4 Dutch TV journalists

On Tuesday evening, three former Salvadoral military officers were sentenced by a jury of five people for the killings of four Dutch journalists in 1982 during the Civil War of the Central Nation. They received 15 -year -old prison terms.

A jury made up of five women condemned the three murder men in a lightning trial which started Tuesday morning in the city in the north of Chalatenango, said Oscar Pérez, lawyer of the Comunicandonos Foundation who represented the families of the victims. Pérez said the prosecutors had asked for minimum prison terms of 15 years for the three.

Former Defense Minister, General José Guillermo García, 91, the former Treasury police director, Colonel Francisco Morán, 93, and Colonel Mario Adalberto Reyes, 85, was the former army commander of the fourth infantry brigade in Chalatenango.

García and Morán are under police custody in a private hospital in San Salvador, while Reyes Mena lives in the United States. In March, the Supreme Court of El Salvador ordered that the extradition process was launched to bring it back.

Pérez said that in addition to the convictions of the former high -ranking officers, the judge sentenced the government for the delay in justice and ordered the commander -in -chief of the armed forces, President Nayib Bukele, to apologize to the victims.

Dutch television journalists – Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans Ter Laag and Joop Willemson – had linked to the left rebels and planned to spend several days behind the rebels. But Salvadoral soldiers armed with assault rifles and machine guns invaded them and guerrillas.

García was expelled from the United States in 2016, after an American judge said it responsible for serious human rights violations during the first years of the war between the left of the left and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front Guerrillas.

The accusation of men was reopened in 2018 after the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a general amnesty adopted after the 1980-1992 war.

He evolved slowly, but in March 2022, relatives of the victims and representatives of the Dutch government and the European Union demanded that the officials to kill Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans Ter Laag and Joop Willemson be judged.

Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp greeted the convictions.

“This is an important moment in the fight against impunity and in the pursuit of justice for the four Dutch journalists and their relatives,” said Veldkamp in a Message on social networks.

“Recognizing the authorities of El Salvador and all those who worked tirelessly in this case,” he added.

According to the Comunicandonos Foundation, Jan Kuiper died only two days before her 40th birthday and his colleague Hans Ter Laag wrote a letter to his girlfriend shortly before the deadly trip, saying: “My dear, this Wednesday, the guerrillas will take us to the liberated area. We are going to Chalatenango, where the armed struggle takes place. It is a very dangerous trip and must be secret.”

Koos Koster studied theology in college and has published several books on international policy, said Comunicandonos of the Foundation. The tombstone of his grave presents an image, made by his sister, representing a biblical history and next to the motto: “Survival obliges”.

Joop Willensen had planned to marry her longtime partner, Yata Matsuzaki, Mexico after her trip to Salvador, She said.

The United Nations Commission for the Truth for El Salvador, which was set up within the framework of a peace agreement not prohibited in 1992, concluded that there was clear evidence that murders were the result of an ambush created by Reyes led with the knowledge of other officials, on the basis of an intelligence report which alerted the presence of journalists.

Other members of the army, including General Rafael Flores Lima and the SGT. Mario Canizales Espinoza was also accused of participation, but died. Canizales would have led the patrol that made the massacre of journalists.

Juan Carlos Sánchez, of the non -governmental organization Mesa contrasts the impunidad, in comments to journalists, described the trial as “transcendental stage that the victims waited 40 years”.

It is estimated that 75,000 civilians were killed during the El Salvador civil war, mainly by the government’s security forces supported by the United States.

The trial was closed to the public.