15 years for perpetrators’ murder of four Dutch journalists in El Salvador

The three suspects of the murder of four Dutch journalists in El Salvador were found guilty in 1982. In a surprisingly fast seat in the Salvadoran town of Chalatenango, the jury unanimously ruled that former colonel Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, former Minister of Defense José Guillermo Garcia and the former police chief Francisco Antonio Morán are owing to the murder of the four-language working. All three were then sentenced to fifteen years in prison. In addition, they lose their rights as citizens. They cannot appeal against the verdict.

In addition to a conviction of the three suspects, the Salvadoran state was also convicted for delaying the judicial process. The judge ruled that the Salvadoran state must make a public statement and apologize to the relatives of the victims. It is the first time that in a case from the Salvadoran Civil War, which was investigated by the UN, it has come to a conviction.

For a long time it was uncertain whether the case would start on Tuesday. The hearing was originally planned for the end of April, but was postponed a day before the start at the request of the lawyer of the suspects. Due to the uncertainty, this time the relatives of the victims decided not to travel to El Salvador. It was clear that if the hearing were to start, the case would be dealt with in one go. However, the fact that the verdict already followed within one day was a surprise.

‘Victims were central’

Oscar Pérez, director of human rights organization Comunicándonos, has been involved in the search for justice for the four Dutch people from the start. « Today we received justice. Today the victims of the conflict were central, not the perpetrators, » Pérez told the case shortly after the case NRC. « But also for El Salvador, where decades were impunity for human rights violations from the civil war, this is an important day. »

The ruling comes to an end for years of struggle for justice for the journalists, who traveled to El Salvador on behalf of the former Omroep Ikon to report on the bloody civil war there. On March 17 they drove in an ambush from the government army when they arrived in the rural province of Chalaatenango for a report with left -wing guerrillas. All four were killed on the spot.

An amnesty law made it impossible for years to prosecute the perpetrators of the murders, which had been identified by a UN truth committee in the nineties. When this law was withdrawn by the Supreme Court in 2016, relatives still reported.

Of the five main suspects, two have since died. Former Minister of Defense José Guillermo Garcia and the former police chief Francisco Antonio Morán have been in house arrest since 2022, while 85-year-old Reyes Mena is still in the United States. An extradition request has been submitted against him.

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