• The accused "There was a group of the guerrillas involved in the Jesuit University"
  • The facts. Slaughter of Ellacuría and the Spanish Jesuits; the horror of the only surviving universal justice case
  • 30 years later, the day we were going to spend with Ellacuría ... and they killed him

29 years have passed, but Enrique Arnaldo Alcubilla remembers very well what he saw: "The jury was put as in a box, where neither its members saw the room nor the room saw them. There was a constant noise of sirens Police, protesters against international observers, and helicopters flying so low that you couldn't hear what was being said in the courtroom, and sometimes defense attorneys got too close to the jury and you couldn't hear what they were saying. they were whispering to the jury. To the point that the judge caught their attention. "

It was told this Thursday by Arnaldo Acubilla, current professor of Constitutional Law at the Rey Juan Carlos University , who together with the lawyer of the Congress of Deputies José Luis Ruiz Navarro has declared as a witness in the trial that continues in the National Court against Innocent Orlando Montano , the only one of the alleged intellectual authors of the 1989 massacre of the Spanish Jesuits who has been prosecuted outside his country.

Alcubilla was a lawyer in Congress in September 1991, when a delegation from the Spanish Parliament went to El Salvador as an international observer in the trial against the military who participated in the massacre. That process ended by acquitting seven high-ranking Salvadoran commanders, including Montano, and condemning two "transmitters" of the orders that were pardoned two years later: Colonel Guillermo Benavides and Lieutenant René Mendoza (the latter exonerated from guilt last Monday in the National Court, where he will testify as a witness in July).

The trial was considered a farce and a fix by institutions such as the United Nations Truth Commission , the Company of Jesus , the US State Department and the human rights organizations that for three decades have participated in the investigation.

"The tests were not verified"

Today, 29 years later, a legal representative of the Congress of Deputies who lived it in situ continues to question forcefully the procedural guarantees of that oral hearing. Or not so oral ... "There was no questioning of any accused. There were no testimonies from either the defense or the prosecution. No ballistics expert appeared. The evidence was not verified. Everything was limited to reading reports and minutes. "

Alcubilla was the lawyer who accompanied four deputies from the PSOE, AP , CiU and Izquierda Unida and wrote a report that told what everyone lived there. The Spanish delegation traveled to El Salvador in September 1991 and met with the President of the Supreme Court, the judge in the case and with representatives of political parties. "For some of us we were less likeable than for others."

The Spanish group also visited the facilities of the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) , where the rector, Ignacio Ellacuría , four other Spanish Jesuits, one from El Salvador, one cook, and her daughter had been killed by a military battalion two years earlier. And, finally, the Spanish delegation went to trial.

In this Thursday's session, Alcubilla described in great detail the conditions under which that process was held and called it "politicized". "Judge [Ricardo] Zamora himself said that he was not comfortable with the process. Doubts were raised even about the composition of the jury. Both the prosecutor and the accusations and some political parties said that the entire investigation had been partial. The most repeated sentence It was: 'Not all those responsible are here, some of those who participated in the order are missing.' "

"External pressure"

Presumably, one of them was there that day and was here this Thursday. From his wheelchair, the former vice minister and former colonel Inocente Orlando Montano has been placed just two meters behind Alcubilla. And without expressing any gesture he has heard how the Spanish professor of Constitutional Law has confirmed that the Armed Forces were the owners of the criminal process that acquitted him.

"The statements provided had come through the Armed Forces. The defense was very nationalistic and asked that international pressures not be heeded. It maintained that conscience should lead to acquittal because the military acted to maintain the security of the country."

Montano has also listened to the narration of the harsh environment that surrounded the trial that acquitted him. "There were daily demonstrations against international observers, helicopter overflights, police sirens and unkind expressions towards us in the newspapers. We were protected by the Salvadoran Police, not the Army. We felt that we were not welcome. It was not a comfortable trip. All that external pressure was heard in the trial. And it was not free. The law says that the autonomy of the jury's decision must be protected, but there was that constant noise, relatives of the accused in the courtroom and a feeling that the culprits were U.S".

And after all that, the sentence. Enrique Arnaldo Alcubilla: "The trial lasted two and a half days. The last afternoon we went to rest at the Spanish Embassy thinking that the verdict would take 24 or 48 hours, but they immediately called us to return to the courtroom. It was night. In four hours they already had a verdict: two guilty and all the others acquitted for due obedience. "

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