Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, Jean Donavan, Ita Ford
Killed by a death squad in El Salvador, 1980
-
images: KryssTal
Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, Jean Donavan, Ita Ford
-
"Now what I ask you is to please advise the Guards. Those who did it. Not to tell anyone. No one. Not any superior at the last minute. Do you understand what I am telling you? You can be in deep shit because the command can take you down if they're put in a bind. Do you understand what I am telling you?"
New York--In a letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Human Rights First urges the State Department to request the appropriate US authorities to conduct an immediate investigation of how the former Director General of the Salvadoran National Guard was permitted to become a resident of the United States despite authoritative finding that he was involved in a cover-up of the 1980 murder of three US nuns and a lay missionary.
Human Rights First also requested release of previously undisclosed information in the possession of the State Department, including "special Embassy evidence," that would shed new light on the case.
"We were shocked by the recent revelation that Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, the Director General of the National Guard at the time of the murders of the churchwomen, has been permitted to reside in this country," said Scott Greathead and Robert Weiner, who are representing the families of the dead women.
Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and lay missionary Jean Donovan, were brutally raped and murdered in El Salvador on December 2, 1980. In May 1984, five enlisted members of the National Guard of El Salvador were convicted of the crime, and sentenced to thirty years in prison.
Greathead and Weiner traveled to El Salvador last week to interview the four National Guardsmen who said for the first time that they acted on orders of higher ups.
"The statements of the convicted Guardsmen we interviewed last week are consistent with significant circumstantial evidence, as well as testimony in the court record, indicating that they were acting pursuant to higher orders to murder the churchwomen," said the letter to Secretary Albright.
"It has been over seventeen years since the churchwomen were murdered, and nearly fourteen years since the five Guardsmen were tried and convicted of the crime. We do not believe any compelling reason exists to justify any further delay in releasing the (evidence)," said Human Rights First.
tortured by Salvadoran security forces During a four-week trial that began on June 24 the plaintiffs told of being detained and tortured by Salvadoran national guardsmen and police under the command of the two generals. The jury began deliberations on Thursday afternoon, and deliberated for a total of some 20hours.John Negroponte wasn't running things when these particular nuns were killed, but he was running things when their murders were being covered up, and he was running things when thousands of other, equally innocent, people were killed. Not in the name of freedom, or democracy, or Christianity, but in the name of the opposite of those things, the precise opposite.
In addition to receiving electric shocks and other forms of brutal torture, Romagoza had been shot in the arm and suspended from his fingers so as to damage his hands and thus ensure that he would never be able to perform surgery again. Gonzalez, who was eight months pregnant at the time she was tortured, was raped and stomped on. Her son died two months after birth as a result of the injuries. She was forced to watch the torture and execution of another prisoner and drink his blood, and was left for dead by the national guardsmen. Mauricio was subjected to horrific beatings and was strung up with his hands over his head for long periods of time.
The case is one of the few cases since the Tokyo trials following World War II in which a foreign commander has been held liable under the doctrine of command responsibility for war crimes committed by his troops.
Global Policy Forum-
