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CNN
6 days ago
- General
- CNN
Top Salvadoran ex-military officers sentenced for wartime killing of Dutch journalists
A jury in El Salvador sentenced three retired high-ranking military officers to 15 years in prison for the murder of four Dutch journalists in 1982, one of the highest profile cases of the Central American nation's civil war. The three were charged on Tuesday for the killings of journalists Koos Joster, Jan Kuiper Joop, Johannes Jan Wilemsen and Hans ter Laag, who were reporting for IKON Television during a 1982 military ambush on a group of former Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas - some of whom were armed. A UN truth commission 11 years later found the ambush was 'deliberately planned to surprise and kill the journalists.' The trial was closed and details about the defendants' pleas and arguments were not made public. El Salvador's civil war stretched from 1980 to 1992, pitting leftist guerrillas against the US-backed Salvadoran army and leaving 75,000 people dead and 8,000 more missing. Former Defense Minister General Jose Guillermo Garcia was sentenced by a jury in the northern town of Chalatenango, alongside two colonels: former Treasury Police chief Francisco Moran and former infantry brigade commander Mario Reyes. All three - respectively aged 91, 93 and 85 - were sentenced in absentia. Garcia and Moran are in hospital under custody and Reyes currently lives in the United States though El Salvador is in the process of seeking his return. 'Truth and justice have prevailed, we have won,' Oscar Perez, a representative of the Comunicandonos Foundation that represents some of the relatives, told reporters. 'The victims are the focus now; not the perpetrators.' Prosecutors had requested the 15-year sentence, taking into account the military officers' age and health conditions. The jury also issued a civil condemnation to the Salvadoran state over the delay in delivering justice, a symbolic measure that obliges the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, President Nayib Bukele, to publicly ask for forgiveness from the victims' families.
CNN
6 days ago
- General
- CNN
Top Salvadoran ex-military officers sentenced for wartime killing of Dutch journalists
A jury in El Salvador sentenced three retired high-ranking military officers to 15 years in prison for the murder of four Dutch journalists in 1982, one of the highest profile cases of the Central American nation's civil war. The three were charged on Tuesday for the killings of journalists Koos Joster, Jan Kuiper Joop, Johannes Jan Wilemsen and Hans ter Laag, who were reporting for IKON Television during a 1982 military ambush on a group of former Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas - some of whom were armed. A UN truth commission 11 years later found the ambush was 'deliberately planned to surprise and kill the journalists.' The trial was closed and details about the defendants' pleas and arguments were not made public. El Salvador's civil war stretched from 1980 to 1992, pitting leftist guerrillas against the US-backed Salvadoran army and leaving 75,000 people dead and 8,000 more missing. Former Defense Minister General Jose Guillermo Garcia was sentenced by a jury in the northern town of Chalatenango, alongside two colonels: former Treasury Police chief Francisco Moran and former infantry brigade commander Mario Reyes. All three - respectively aged 91, 93 and 85 - were sentenced in absentia. Garcia and Moran are in hospital under custody and Reyes currently lives in the United States though El Salvador is in the process of seeking his return. 'Truth and justice have prevailed, we have won,' Oscar Perez, a representative of the Comunicandonos Foundation that represents some of the relatives, told reporters. 'The victims are the focus now; not the perpetrators.' Prosecutors had requested the 15-year sentence, taking into account the military officers' age and health conditions. The jury also issued a civil condemnation to the Salvadoran state over the delay in delivering justice, a symbolic measure that obliges the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, President Nayib Bukele, to publicly ask for forgiveness from the victims' families.
CNN
6 days ago
- General
- CNN
Top Salvadoran ex-military officers sentenced for wartime killing of Dutch journalists
A jury in El Salvador sentenced three retired high-ranking military officers to 15 years in prison for the murder of four Dutch journalists in 1982, one of the highest profile cases of the Central American nation's civil war. The three were charged on Tuesday for the killings of journalists Koos Joster, Jan Kuiper Joop, Johannes Jan Wilemsen and Hans ter Laag, who were reporting for IKON Television during a 1982 military ambush on a group of former Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas - some of whom were armed. A UN truth commission 11 years later found the ambush was 'deliberately planned to surprise and kill the journalists.' The trial was closed and details about the defendants' pleas and arguments were not made public. El Salvador's civil war stretched from 1980 to 1992, pitting leftist guerrillas against the US-backed Salvadoran army and leaving 75,000 people dead and 8,000 more missing. Former Defense Minister General Jose Guillermo Garcia was sentenced by a jury in the northern town of Chalatenango, alongside two colonels: former Treasury Police chief Francisco Moran and former infantry brigade commander Mario Reyes. All three - respectively aged 91, 93 and 85 - were sentenced in absentia. Garcia and Moran are in hospital under custody and Reyes currently lives in the United States though El Salvador is in the process of seeking his return. 'Truth and justice have prevailed, we have won,' Oscar Perez, a representative of the Comunicandonos Foundation that represents some of the relatives, told reporters. 'The victims are the focus now; not the perpetrators.' Prosecutors had requested the 15-year sentence, taking into account the military officers' age and health conditions. The jury also issued a civil condemnation to the Salvadoran state over the delay in delivering justice, a symbolic measure that obliges the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, President Nayib Bukele, to publicly ask for forgiveness from the victims' families.
Reuters
6 days ago
- General
- Reuters
Top Salvadoran ex-military officers sentenced for wartime killing of Dutch journalists
SAN SALVADOR, June 4 (Reuters) - A jury in El Salvador sentenced three retired high-ranking military officers to 15 years in prison for the murder of four Dutch journalists in 1982, one of the highest profile cases of the Central American nation's civil war. The three were charged on Tuesday for the killings of journalists Koos Joster, Jan Kuiper Joop, Johannes Jan Wilemsen and Hans ter Laag, who were reporting for IKON Television during a 1982 military ambush on a group of former Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas - some of whom were armed. A U.N. truth commission 11 years later found the ambush was "deliberately planned to surprise and kill the journalists." The trial was closed and details about the defendants' pleas and arguments were not made public. El Salvador's civil war stretched from 1980 to 1992, pitting leftist guerrillas against the U.S.-backed Salvadoran army and leaving 75,000 people dead and 8,000 more missing. Former Defense Minister General Jose Guillermo Garcia was sentenced by a jury in the northern town of Chalatenango, alongside two colonels: former Treasury Police chief Francisco Moran and former infantry brigade commander Mario Reyes. All three - respectively aged 91, 93 and 85 - were sentenced in absentia. Garcia and Moran are in hospital under custody and Reyes currently lives in the United States though El Salvador is in the process of seeking his return. "Truth and justice have prevailed, we have won," Oscar Perez, a representative of the Comunicandonos Foundation that represents some of the relatives, told reporters. "The victims are the focus now; not the perpetrators." Prosecutors had requested the 15-year sentence, taking into account the military officers' age and health conditions. The jury also issued a civil condemnation to the Salvadoran state over the delay in delivering justice, a symbolic measure that obliges the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, President Nayib Bukele, to publicly ask for forgiveness from the victims' families.
Al Jazeera
7 days ago
- General
- Al Jazeera
El Salvador convicts army officers for 1982 killing of 4 Dutch journalists
Three former officers in El Salvador's military have been convicted for the killings of four Dutch journalists during the Central American country's brutal civil war in 1982. Former Minister of National Defence Colonel Jose Guillermo Garcia, 91, former police Colonel Francisco Moran, 93, and ex-infantry brigade commander Colonel Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, 85, were found guilty late on Tuesday by a jury in the northern city of Chalatenango, a lawyer said. The Diario El Salvador news outlet reported that the three former officers – none of whom was present in court – were sentenced to 15 years in prison each for the killings. The four Dutch journalists, Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Hans ter Laag and Joop Willemsen, were killed while filming a television documentary on El Salvador's civil war, which saw an estimated 75,000 civilians killed – mostly by United States-backed government security forces – between 1980 and 1992. The journalists had linked up with leftist rebels and planned to spend several days behind the front lines reporting on the war. But Salvadoran soldiers armed with assault rifles and machineguns ambushed them and the rebels. 'We have clearly shown the level of responsibility of the accused,' said Oscar Perez, a lawyer for the Foundation Comunicandonos, which represents the victims. 'The entire organised power structure that intervened in the political-military decisions that led to the murder of the journalists,' he said. A United Nations-sponsored Truth Commission in 1993 found that the journalists had walked into an ambush trap that was planned by Reyes, who still lives in the US, and with the knowledge of other officers. The Salvadoran Supreme Court approved an extradition request for Reyes in March, but there has been no progress in his return from the US so far. The ageing Garcia and Moran are under police surveillance in a private hospital in the capital, San Salvador. García was deported from the US in 2016, after a US judge declared him responsible for serious human rights violations during the early years of the war between the military and the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front fighters. The prosecution of the men was reopened in 2018 after the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a general amnesty passed following the end of the civil war. The case against the suspects moved slowly, but in March 2022, relatives of the victims and representatives of the Dutch government as well as the European Union demanded that those responsible for the journalists' killing face trial.
