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CNN
04-06-2025
- 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
04-06-2025
- 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
04-06-2025
- 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
04-06-2025
- 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.
Malay Mail
04-06-2025
- General
- Malay Mail
After 42 years, El Salvador convicts ex-military over Dutch journalists' deaths in civil war ambush
CHALATENANGO (El Salvador), June 4 — A former defence minister in El Salvador and two retired colonels were found guilty Tuesday of the 1982 killings of four Dutch journalists during the country's civil war, a lawyer for families of the deceased said. A five-member jury sentenced the defendants, now in their 80s or 90s, to 15 years in prison after an 11-hour session on the first day of the trial, attorney Pedro Cruz said outside the courthouse. In a crime that shocked the world, Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Hans ter Laag and Joop Willemsen were killed while filming a television documentary. More than 75,000 people were killed in El Salvador's 1980-1992 civil war pitting the US-backed military against leftist guerrillas. The Dutch reporters worked for IKON TV, a Dutch channel founded by several churches. The accused are General Jose Guillermo Garcia, 91, former police colonel Francisco Antonio Moran, 93, and ex-infantry brigade commander Mario Reyes Mena, 85. None of them were in court for the trial, which was conducted with press and held in the northern city of Chalatenango. 'The fight against impunity took a long time, but it was won,' the Dutch ambassador for all of Central America, Arjen van den Berg, said outside the courthouse. In 1993, a UN-sponsored Truth Commission found the journalists had walked into an ambush planned by Reyes, who lives in the United States, 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 so far. Garcia and Moran are under police surveillance in a private hospital in San Salvador. The defendants had faced up to 30 years in prison but got less time because of their age and ill health, the lawyer Cruz said. The NGOs Fundacion Comunicandonos and the Salvadoran Association for Human Rights hailed the trial as a 'decisive step' in the search for truth and justice. 'We trust that this trial sets a historic precedent in the fight against impunity,' they said in a joint statement. The case remained unresolved for decades after the presiding judge received threats in 1988, prompting her to seek refuge in Canada. It was reopened in 2018 after the Supreme Court declared an amnesty law for civil war crimes unconstitutional, but relatives of the victims still had to wait years for the main hearing. Evidence such as a statement from a former US military attache and a military expert's report 'directly points' to the defendants' responsibility, said lawyer Pedro Cruz, who represents the victims' families. Garcia led the Armed Forces from 1979 to 1983, when the worst massacres perpetrated by the military took place. — AFP
