RIGHTS-US: Two Former Salvadorean Generals Sued

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, May 15 1999 (IPS) - Two top-ranking army officers from El Salvador, who also served as defence ministers in their home country, are being sued in a US federal court for their role in the 1980 murder of four US churchwomen.

The ground-breaking case is directed against retired Generals. Eugenio Vides Casanova and Guillermo Garcia, who have lived in Florida for the past 10 years.

They were key figures in US-backed counter-insurgency operations in El Salvador during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Both men were served with process at their Florida homes, but refused to comment on the suit.

The lawsuit’s sponsors include the families of the murdered churchwomen, the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR), and several US congressmen who have long taken an interest in the case. They want to see the two former generals deported from this country.

“Quite frankly, I don’t believe Vides Casanova and Garcia deserve a cup of coffee in the United States, let alone residency,” Massachusetts Rep. James McGovern told reporters at a news conference in Washington Thursday.

“We think they should be departed; they do not belong here.”

The lawsuit is also designed to pry loose still-classified documents from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon which are believed to offer secret details about the women’s notorious killings, which resulted in a brief suspension of US military aid by the outgoing administration of US president Jimmy Carter.

It will also be a test of the 1995 Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA), a federal law that permits victims of “outrageous crimes” and their survivors to sue not only officials who actually committed the abuses, but also their commanders who had the authority and responsibility to ensure that such acts did not take place.

A number of victims recently have prevailed against foreign officials found in the United States under the TVPA or its antecedent, the 200-year-old Alien Tort Claims Act.

Senior military officials from Guatemala, Argentina, Ethiopia, and Indonesia plus the former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos have been successfully sued under these acts.

The latest lawsuit came amid increased worldwide interest in pressing charges in cases of notorious human rights abuses, particularly in light of the use of blanket amnesties decreed by former military regimes before giving up power to civilian governments.

“From the case of (former Chilean dictator Augusto) Pinochet to the agreement on an International Criminal Court, we are beginning to realise the full dimensions of international law as a tool, not merely as a topic of conversation,” according to a LCHR memo.

The case here has been brought by the families of Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and lay missionary Jean Donovan, who were abducted from their van, raped and murdered on Dec 2, 1980.

The murders created a sensation both in El Salvador and the United States, where they became a source of fierce contention between human-rights activists and top officials of the incoming Reagan administration.

Critics declared that no one – not even US churchwomen – was exempt from the fierce repression of the Salvadorean military and its deathsquads.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was called in and, despite initial attempts by senior Salvadorean officers to cover up the crime and tamper with the evidence, four National Guardsmen and their subsergeant, Luis Antonio Colindres Aleman, were arrested for the crime. They declined to implicate any of their superiors.

In May, 1984, under intense US pressure, all five were convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. The case was touted by the Reagan administration as a major breakthrough in ending military impunity in El Salvador and advancing the cause of human rig hts.

After the election victory the following month by Christian Democrat Jose Napoleon Duarte, the administration’s policy on El Salvador ceased to be the controversial issue it had been in the US media and Congress.

Citing “special embassy evidence” which it refused to make public, the Reagan administration said it was satisfied with the verdict and believed that Colindres Aleman was acting on his own.

The families of the murdered women and the LCHR, however, continued to pursue the case.

In March, 1993, the UN-backed Truth Commission in El Salvador reported that the five Guarsmen had received orders from superiors to execute the women and that high-ranking military personnel knew that the murders had been committed and nonetheless concealed the facts.

At the time, Vides Casanova was the head of the National Guard, and Garcia – who made “no serious effort to thoroughly investigate those guilty of the assassinations,” according to the Truth Commission – was defence minister.

In 1989, at a time when thousands of Salvadoreans were still being denied entry into the United States, both men were given permanent residency status and set up house in Florida.

“These two got residency in record speed,” noted Rep. Joe Moakley, who last year attached a resolution to the 1999 foreign- aid bill demanding an accounting from the US Justice Department.

Since then, hundreds of documents on the case have been released by the State Department, including the “special embassy evidence” which, according to the LCHR and a recent State Department review, proves nothing about whether or not Colindres Aleman was acting on orders from higher levels.

The embassy document “does, however, establish that the man appointed by Vides Casanova to head up the investigation carried out a cover-up with the Guardsmen to fabricate and alter evidence,” says the LCHR, which last year interviewed the four Guardsmen.

They then admitted for the first time that they acted on higher orders. Colindres Aleman, who was given parole three months later, refused to co-operate.

The LCHR has since pressed the Salvadorean authorities to follow up on their testimony, but they have refused to do so, prompting the new lawsuit.

“I expect Gen. Vides Casanova and Gen. Garcia are learning that their US residency has its downside,” said Moakley Thursday.

“While they enjoy the benefits of living in the greatest country earth, they also have to answer to the greatest judicial system on earth.”

The families insist that they are not pursuing the case for money, but rather as a means of both prying more documents out of the US government and of shining the spotlight on the two generals who are living here.