A group of Salvadoran military officers, including a former defense minister, will be put on trial for the massacre of nearly one thousand civilians in 1981, carried out as part of a state offensive against leftist guerrillas, an organization representing the victims reported on Tuesday.
This marks a milestone in the legal battle launched in 1990 to bring to justice those responsible for the massacre, the worst in recent Latin American history and committed during El Salvador’s civil war (1980–1992). Soldiers from the Atlacatl Battalion shot and killed 986 people, including 558 children, in events that took place in El Mozote, in the northeast, and neighboring communities between December 9 and 13, 1981.
The victims were accused of collaborating with the leftist guerrilla group Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which later demobilized and became a political party after the signing of a peace agreement in 1992. Thirteen alleged perpetrators have been sent to trial, according to a ruling issued on November 26 by the examining court in the city of San Francisco Gotera, the NGO Cristosal said in a statement.
For now, no date has been set for the start of the trial, said a spokesperson for the organization. An association of relatives of the massacre victims described the decision as an achievement after more than two decades of struggle. “It is like finding a small light in the midst of so much adversity, ”said Leonel Tobar, president of the El Mozote Human Rights Promotion Association.
A proven case
Tobar said he is confident that the judge could hand down a verdict by next year at the latest. The measure can still be appealed by the soldiers’ defense, Cristosal explained. The organization announced in July that it was suspending operations in El Salvador and relocating to Guatemala, alleging persecution by President Nayib Bukele.
However, Tobar believes that the El Mozote massacre is an “extremely well-proven case” in terms of what happened and who is responsible, so “there is no need to keep digging” further. According to Cristosal, former defense minister Guillermo García and twelve other officers will stand trial on charges of murder and rape.
García, along with two other former military commanders, was sentenced in July to 60 years in prison for the murder of four Dutch journalists in March 1982, also during the civil war. However, the three defendants will only have to serve 30 years in prison, since that was the maximum sentence established by criminal law at the time of the events.
Progress in the El Mozote case “has been possible thanks to the crucial testimonial evidence bravely provided” by survivors of the massacre and forensic examinations, Cristosal said, while denouncing an “escalating crackdown” by Bukele’s government against humanitarian activists.
The prosecution of the soldiers coincides with the start on Wednesday of a series of memorial events for the victims in the communities that were the scene of the massacre. El Salvador’s civil war left some 75,000 dead and more than 7,000 disappeared, as well as causing severe damage to the economy.
