A jury of five women convicted three former Salvadoran military officers on Tuesday for the 1982 murders of four Dutch journalists during the country’s civil war, handing down 15-year prison sentences to each.
The trial, which began and concluded on the same day in the northern city of Chalatenango, found former Defense Minister Gen. José Guillermo García, 91, former treasury police director Col. Francisco Morán, 93, and Col. Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, 85, guilty of murder. Reyes Mena served as commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade in Chalatenango during that time.
García and Morán are currently under police protection at a private hospital in San Salvador, while Reyes Mena resides in the United States. In March, El Salvador’s Supreme Court authorized the start of extradition proceedings to bring Reyes Mena back to face justice.
Oscar Pérez, lawyer for the Foundation Comunicandonos representing the families of the victims, said the court also criticized the government for delays in delivering justice and ordered President Nayib Bukele, who also serves as commander in chief of the armed forces, to issue a public apology to the victims.
The journalists—Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag, and Joop Willemson—were working behind rebel lines with leftist guerrillas to report on the civil conflict when Salvadoran soldiers ambushed them, resulting in their deaths.
García had been deported from the U.S. in 2016 after a judge found him responsible for serious human rights abuses during the early years of the war against the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front guerrillas.
The prosecution was revived in 2018 following a Supreme Court ruling that declared a general amnesty passed after the 1980-1992 civil war unconstitutional. Progress was slow, but in March 2022, the victims’ families, supported by the Dutch government and the European Union, pushed for accountability.
Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp welcomed the verdict, calling it “an important moment in the fight against impunity and in the pursuit of justice for the four Dutch journalists and their families.” He expressed gratitude to the Salvadoran authorities and all who contributed to the case.
The United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador, established as part of a 1992 peace agreement, concluded that the killings were orchestrated by Reyes Mena with the knowledge of other officials, based on an intelligence report alerting them of the journalists’ presence.
Other military members, including Gen. Rafael Flores Lima and Sgt. Mario Canizales Espinoza—who allegedly led the patrol that carried out the massacre—were also implicated but have since died.
Juan Carlos Sánchez of the NGO Mesa Contra la Impunidad described the trial as a “transcendental step that the victims have waited 40 years for.”
During El Salvador’s civil war, an estimated 75,000 civilians were killed, mostly by U.S.-backed government forces. The trial was held behind closed doors.
