SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) 鈥� Three former Salvadoran military officers were convicted by a five-person jury late Tuesday for the 1982 during the Central American nation鈥檚 civil war. They received 15-year prison sentences.
A jury made up of five women convicted the three men of murder in a lightning trial that began Tuesday morning in the northern city of Chalatenango, said Oscar P茅rez, lawyer for the Foundation Comunicandonos that represented the victims' families. P茅rez said prosecutors had requested minimum 15-year prison sentences for all three.
Convicted were former Defense Minister Gen. Jos茅 Guillermo Garc铆a, 91, former treasury police director Col. Francisco Mor谩n, 93, and Col. Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, 85, who was the former army commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade in Chalatenango.
Garc铆a and Mor谩n are under police guard at a private hospital in San Salvador, while Reyes Mena lives in the United States. In March, El Salvador鈥檚 Supreme Court ordered that the extradition process be started to bring him back.
P茅rez said that in addition to the convictions of the former high-ranking officers, the judge condemned the government for the delayed justice and ordered the commander in chief of the armed forces, President Nayib Bukele, to issue a public apology to the victims.
The Dutch TV journalists 鈥� Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag and Joop Willemson 鈥� had linked up with leftist rebels and planned to spend several days behind rebel lines reporting. But Salvadoran soldiers armed with assault rifles and machine guns ambushed them and the guerrillas.
Garc铆a was deported from the U.S. in 2016, after a U.S. judge declared him responsible for serious human rights violations during the early years of the war between the military and the leftist Farabundo Mart铆 National Liberation Front guerrillas.
The prosecution of the men was reopened in 2018 after the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a general amnesty passed following the 1980-1992 war.
It moved slowly, but in March 2022, relatives of the victims and representatives of the Dutch government and European Union
The United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador, which was set up as part of a U.N.-brokered peace agreement in 1992, concluded there was clear evidence that the killings were the result of an ambush set up by Reyes Mena with the knowledge of other officials, based on an intelligence report that alerted of the journalists鈥� presence.
Other members of the military, including Gen. Rafael Flores Lima and Sgt. Mario Canizales Espinoza were also accused of involvement, but died. Canizales allegedly led the patrol that carried out the massacre of the journalists.
Juan Carlos S谩nchez, of the nongovernmental organization Mesa Contra la Impunidad, in comments to journalists, called the trial a 鈥渢ranscendental step that the victims have waited 40 years for.鈥�
An estimated 75,000 civilians were killed during El Salvador鈥檚 civil war, mostly by U.S.-backed government security forces.
The trial was closed to the public.
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Marcos Alem谩n, The Associated Press
