2023-12-24 03:28:43
A court of The Savior ordered the arrest of former president Alfredo Cristiani accused of covering up those responsible for the El Mozote massacre, where regarding a thousand people died in 1981 at the hands of the army during the civil war, a source linked to the case reported this Saturday (12/23/2023).
The order, which also implicates four former deputies, was issued by a court in the city of San Francisco Gotera (northeast) that is prosecuting several soldiers for the massacre, considered the largest in Latin America and perpetrated during the civil war in El Salvador ( 1980-1992).
“We are interested in prosecuting all those responsible and for years there has been talk regarding the people who have been hindering, only we think that there are more who are involved (…) and it should really be investigated,” Díaz added.
Amnesty to cover up those responsible
According to the resolution, Cristiani, 76, and the four former deputies covered up those allegedly responsible for the massacre by promoting the amnesty, approved in 1993 and repealed in 2016.
That law “guaranteed full and absolute impunity to the material and intellectual authors” of the massacres of El Mozote and surrounding places, the text indicated.
The mass murder occurred between December 9 and 13, 1981. Salvadoran Army units, led by the Atlacatl counterinsurgency battalion – trained by the United States – murdered at least 988 inhabitants, including 558 children, of El Mozote and communities nearby.
Cristosal fears a strategy to delay the process
The NGO Cristosal, which also accompanies the victims, indicated in a statement that the arrest warrants “are one more strategy to delay a process that has been waiting for justice” for more than four decades.
“While authorities continue to delay this process, the number of victims who die without having access to justice continues to grow,” the group added.
Cristiani has not been arrested because his whereregardings are unknown for years.
From 2022 an arrest warrant is out for him for his alleged participation in the murder of six Catholic priests and two collaboratorscommitted by the army in 1989 on the campus of the Jesuit Universidad Centroamericana (UCA).
Cristiani has also been involved in acts of corruption and in June several assets were seized from him by the prosecutor’s office, in a process of “extinction of domain” once morest the former president who governed under the banner of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance party (ARENA).
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