A court in El Salvador sentenced three former military chiefs to 60 years in prison on Thursday for the murder of four Dutch journalists 43 years ago during the country’s civil war (1980–1992). On June 3, the Court of First Instance of Dulce Nombre de MarÃa, in the northern department of Chalatenango, had initially sentenced them to 15 years in prison each. However, this Thursday, when delivering the written verdict, the court clarified that since four people were killed, the sentence totals 60 years.
The ruling specifies that the convicted men “will only serve 30 years” in prison, the maximum sentence allowed by the criminal law in force at the time, explained the victims’ lawyer, Gustavo Huezo. The convicted men are: former Minister of Defense (1979–1983), General José Guillermo GarcÃa, age 91; former director of the now-defunct Treasury Police, Colonel Francisco Morán, 93; and Colonel Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, 85, former commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade based in Chalatenango.
On March 17, 1982, Dutch journalists Jan Cornelius Kuiper Joop, Koos Jacobus Andries Koster, Hans Lodewijk ter Laag, and Johannes Jan Willemsen were killed in an ambush by the Atonal Battalion in Chalatenango while filming a documentary on El Salvador’s civil war. The journalists were working for IKON TV, a Dutch television channel created by several churches.
According to the verdict, Morán and Reyes Mena were convicted as “indirect perpetrators” and GarcÃa as an “accomplice by omission.” The three retired military officers were also ordered to pay civil damages to the victims’ families.
The ruling also requires the Salvadoran state to publicly apologize to the journalists’ families for the “delay in justice” and because the “main perpetrators” were part of the military high command. The public apology must be issued by President Nayib Bukele, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, within 30 working days.
The case remained in impunity until it was reopened in 2018 after El Salvador’s Supreme Court declared the 1993 Amnesty Law unconstitutional in 2016. That law had pardoned crimes committed during the civil war. The conflict left 75,000 people dead and 7,000 missing, according to official figures.
