A former defense minister of El Salvador and two retired colonels have been convicted of the 1982 killings of four Dutch journalists during the country’s civil war, a lawyer for families of the deceased said. A five-member jury sentenced the defendants, now in their 80s or 90s, to 15 years in prison after an 11-hour session on the first day of the trial on Tuesday.
In a crime that shocked the world, Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Hans ter Laag,and Joop Willemsen were killed while filming a television documentary. The Dutch reporters worked for IKON TV, a Dutch channel founded by several churches. The accused are General José Guillermo García, 91, former police colonel Francisco Antonio Morán, 93, and ex-infantry brigade commander Mario Reyes Mena, 85. None of them were in court for the trial, which was conducted with the press and held in the northern city of Chalatenango. García led the Armed Forces from 1979 to 1983, when the worst massacres perpetrated by the military took place.
In 1993, a UN-sponsored Truth Commission found the journalists had walked into an ambush planned by Reyes, who lives in the United States, and with the knowledge of other officers. The Salvadorian supreme court approved an extradition request for Reyes in March, but there has been no progress so far. The defendants had faced up to 30 years in prison but got less time because of their age and ill health, said lawyer Pedro Cruz, who represents the victims’ families.
More than 75,000 people were killed in El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war pitting the U.S.-backed military against leftist guerrillas.
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