• Newspaper library The day we were going to spend with Ellacuría... and they killed him
  • Massacre of Jesuits "I heard gunshots... They were my teammates torn apart and lying face down."

The Attorney General's Office of the Republic of El Salvador reopened the Ellacuria Case on Monday, after accusing former President Alfredo Cristiani (1989-1994) of the massacre that occurred on November 16, 1989 of six Jesuits, five of them Spaniards, including Ignacio Ellacuría, ideologue of the Liberation Theory. Specifically, the Prosecutor's Office reported that there are several witnesses, including General Emilio Ponce, now deceased, who locate Cristiani in the place of the meeting where the military operation that caused the murder of the six Jesuits and two other women was coordinated and ordered: "he agreed or authorized the events that triggered those deaths."

Specifically, the Prosecutor's Office has filed charges against eight people for the crimes of homicide, acts of terrorism, conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, procedural fraud and concealment. The investigation in the case has determined, according to the Prosecutor's Office, that former President Cristiani and Father Ignacio Ellacuría, rector of the José Simeón Cañas Central American University (UCA) at the time, held several phone calls prior to the massacre. "In one of the calls, Cristiani assures him that he should not worry about the registration that was executed in the UCA and asks him to remain calm and in place," he details, while revealing that "there are more than 20 witnesses who confirm these facts."

Among the people accused is former deputy Rodolfo Parker, whom they attribute to having "manipulated the statements that were given in the court of honor" of the Armed Forces when he practiced as a lawyer. The prosecutor who presented the indictment before a court in San Salvador points out that there are two witnesses who corroborate that Parker "broke the statements that were made" and that "he made an offer of money in exchange for the material authors of the facts to try to cover up the intellectual authors." For this reason, the Prosecutor's Office accuses him of procedural fraud and personal concealment, as well as Ermenegildo Rivas and Óscar León Linares.

One of the protected witnesses whose statement has been presented by the Prosecutor's Office to support the accusation, stated on May 30 that "Parker got up and told them that they could not declare the things that had been mentioned to him, because they could not involve the President of the Republic (Alfredo Cristiani) and the members of the high command (FAES). He told them that they were involving his compadre, who at the time was on duty without telling us who he was referring to, whether it was the president or any of the high-ranking officials involved."

The other people charged by the Prosecutor's Office are military officers who occupied the high command when the murders took place: Juan Rafael Bustillo, Juan Orlando Zepeda, Rafael Humberto Larios, Inocente Orlando Montano, Carlos Camilo Hernández and Nelson Iván López, all accused of co-authorship of the murders.

The Prosecutor's Office of El Salvador recalled that Colonel Montano was already sentenced in 2020 in Spain to 113 years in prison when he was convicted of having executed the operation to assassinate the religious, although "only for the death of five Spanish Jesuit priests, but he was not convicted for the murders of a priest of Salvadoran origin and the two Salvadoran women, facts for which "we are also accusing him here."

It so happens that the accusation against Cristiani comes two days after he was the first person investigated in the so-called war against corruption promoted by the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, as announced in his speech for the four years of government. The president revealed that day that the attorney general, Rodolfo Delgado, was not in the act because he was raiding all the properties of Cristiani, who today is a fugitive from justice and who governed the Central American country for five years under the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), a right-wing party that held power for 20 years in a row.

Bukele accused him of being "one of the politicians who did the most damage to the country and who believed himself to be one of the owners of the farm and that is why he despised our people." During the operation, the Prosecutor's Office intervened the former president 156 properties, 15 bank accounts and 42 vehicles, while carrying out a preventive seizure in three companies, so that the amount seized amounted to 10.6 million dollars. Specifically, the Prosecutor's Office accuses him of having appropriated public funds in the amount of 4.2 million dollars during the five years of the Presidency.

It should be remembered that Cristiani assumed power in the midst of the Salvadoran civil war between the Army and the guerrillas, which ended in 1992 with the signing of the Peace Accords. During his mandate, a group of soldiers entered the Central American University on November 16, 1989 and massacred Ignacio Ellacuría and the also Salvadoran nationalized Spanish Jesuits Ignacio Martín, Segundo Montes, Armando López and Juan Ramón Moreno, as well as Joaquín López, born in the Central American country, the employee Elba Julia Ramos and her 16-year-old daughter Celina Ramos.

Judicial process with ups and downs

On January 23, 1992, a jury in El Salvador sentenced Colonel and former director of the Guillermo Alfredo Benavides Military School and Lieutenant Yussi Mendoza to 30 years in prison. However, on April 1, 1993 they were released, after the approval that year of the General Amnesty Law, to protect those involved in crimes during the civil war that devastated the Central American country between 1980 and 1992. However, in July 2016 the Supreme Court of Justice declared the Amnesty Law unconstitutional, leading Benavides back to prison.

However, in November of last year, the Fourth Court of Penitentiary Supervision and Execution of the Sentence of San Salvador decreed his early conditional release because the parameters established in the Penitentiary Law had been met, according to which, those over 60 years of age can opt for early release and who, in addition, have served a third of the sentence. In this case, the colonel was 77 years old and served 10 years in prison in October 2022.

In January 2022, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice decided to reopen the case of the massacre, after declaring the amparo appeal filed on November 16, 2021 by the Attorney General of El Salvador, Rodolfo Delgado, 32 years after the massacre. As requested by the prosecutor, the Supreme Court of Justice invalidated the resolution of September 8, 2020, by which the Criminal Chamber of this Court shelved the Ellacuría case by confirming the definitive dismissals in favor of those involved in the crime after considering that the crimes had expired.

In this way, according to the new resolution of the judges of the Supreme Court of Justice, "things return to the state in which they were before the issuance of said order", so that "the dismissals are annulled when considering that the previous Criminal Chamber "violated the rights of the relatives of the victims and society to jurisdictional protection and to know the truth".

In this sense, the brief pointed out that the previous Criminal Chamber "violated fundamental rights of the victims and society by closing the trial", which meant an "obstacle to the relatives of the victims and society in general of access to the court so that it could rule on its claim and, Therefore, justice and subsequent comprehensive reparation have not been possible."

Therefore, the resolution of September 8, 2020 of the Criminal Chamber in which the definitive dismissal of former military officers Juan Orlando Zepeda, Francisco Elena Fuentes and Rafael Humberto Larios, accused of being the intellectual authors of the crime, was confirmed. As a result, the criminal proceedings against them, as well as against René Castillo Ponce, Juan Rafael Bustillo, Inocente Orlando Montano and former President Alfredo Cristiani had been declared null and void.

Thus, the Constitutional Chamber considered that the Criminal Chamber that issued the dismissal "failed to take into consideration that the facts denounced and that are intended to be investigated in the criminal process could be considered, at least provisionally, as crimes against humanity or war crimes constituting serious violations of International Humanitarian Law."

Cristiani's escape abroad

In March 2022, the Third Court of Peace of San Salvador ordered the arrest of Cristiani for the crime of "commission by omission" in the crime of murder of the Jesuits and their two collaborators that occurred four months after he assumed the Presidency of El Salvador. However, he could never be captured because he was outside the country, since the Prosecutor's Office presumes that he left El Salvador a month before the arrest warrant. Through the social media account of his daughter, Claudia Cristiani, the former president said in March 2022 that he "never" knew of the plans they had to commit those murders. Thus, Cristiani and 12 other people were charged by the Prosecutor's Office on February 25, 2022.

The last person to be convicted of these acts was the former colonel and former Deputy Prime Minister of Public Security of El Salvador Inocente Orlando Montano. Spain's National Court sentenced him on September 11, 2020, to 133 years as one of the intellectual authors of the massacre ordered by the Salvadoran Army in 1989.

Montano could be tried in Spain after a US judge, Kimberly Swank, approved his extradition, while, on the contrary, the Contentious Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador dismissed the arrest warrant issued by Spain against 17 soldiers accused of the crime of the six priests and the two women. All of them had been arrested after on February 5, 2016 the National Civil Police of El Salvador and Interpol agents began an operation to arrest them a month after the judge of the National Court Eloy Velasco reiterated on January 5 of that year the validity of a red alert in Interpol for the capture of these soldiers accused of terrorist murder and against humanity.

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