Spanish court orders arrest of 20 Salvadorans for 1989 massacre

Spain's High Court on Monday issued international arrest warrants for 20 current and former Salvadoran military officers for the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests and two housekeepers in San Salvador.

Judge Eloy Velasco ordered the arrests after hearing testimony from a couple who witnessed the murders of the priests and the two domestic helpers on the campus of Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas.

On the morning of November 16, 1989, during a guerrilla offensive in the capital, a military commando unit stormed the university and killed the dean, Ignacio Ellacuría of Bilbao.

A few months back, a US expert witness presented Velasco with documents that were in the possession of the CIA which allegedly showed there was a link between the military's high command and other intelligence services in coordinating Ellacuría's murder. According to testimony, Ellacuría, an expert in mediation, tried to seek a peace deal between the National Farabundo Martí Liberation Front (FMLN) and the government. However, some in the military saw that as a threat to their hold on power. From 1982 to 1992, El Salvador was engaged in a bloody civil war that claimed as many as 75,000 lives.

The squadron also massacred the other priests, Joaquín López y López of El Salvador, and the Spaniards Ignacio Martín Baró, Juan Ramón Moreno, Segundo Montes and Armando López. The housekeepers, Julia Elba and Celina Ramos, were also killed.

A complaint was filed last year by the Human Rights Association of Spain and the US Center for Justice and Responsibility on behalf of Alicia Martín Baró, a Carmelite nun who is the sister of one of the priests. The charges were brought under the principle of universal jurisdiction and because five of the victims were Spanish.

In 1991 nine military officials were brought before the courts for these murders but only two were convicted. Two years later, they were freed after a general amnesty was declared.

The defendants in the case are Generals Humberto Larios, René Emilio Ponce (now deceased), Juan Rafael Bustillo, and Juan Orlando Zepeda. In addition, warrants were issued for Colonels Inocente Orlando Montano and Francisco Fuentes, and Lieutenants Carlos Camilo Hernández Barahona, José Ricardo Espinoza Guerra and Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos. The court also charged Sergeants Antonio Ramiro Ávalos Vargas and Tómas Zarpate Castillo, Corporal Ángel Pérez Vásquez and soldiers Óscar Mariano Amaya and José Alberto Sierra Ascencio.