Salvadoran Judge Summons Suspects in El Mozote Massacre

A Salvadoran judge has reopened the case of the El Mozote massacre and ordered 20 military suspects, including a former defense minister and other high-ranking officials, to appear in court. The massacre saw a U.S.-trained Salvadoran death squad kill over 1,000 civilians during El Salvador's bloody civil war.

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Judge Jorge Guzman Urquilla issued a notice to bring the suspects to court on March 29 and 30 to face accusations of their involvement in the 1981 massacre at El Mozote and other surrounding villages.

Those summoned for the case include former minister of defense, General Jose Guillermo Garcia; former joint chief of staff of the armed forces, Rafael Flores Lima; and former commander of the 3rd infantry brigade, Colonel Jaime Flores Grijalva.

The defendants have been charged with crimes ranging from murder, aggravated rape, acts of terrorism, robbery, theft and aggravated damage. The judge also asked lawyers representing victims and witnesses to testify about the crimes to strengthen the legal case. 

Between Dec. 11 and 13, 1981, during the country’s civil war, U.S.-trained Salvadoran soldiers in the Atlacatl Battalion, formed from graduates of the “School of the Americas,” committed one of the most infamous authorities of the civil war and in Latin America.

The death squad entered the northeastern town of El Mozote and other villages, including La Joya, Los Toriles, Jocote Amarillo and Cerro Pando, where over 1,000 civilians – mostly women and children – were murdered, with hundreds being displaced.

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The soldiers were supposedly entering the villages to look for rival left-wing guerrillas, whom the villagers were sympathetic towards, but ended up wiping out virtually all of the inhabitants. During the civil war fought between a coalition of left-wing guerrilla groups known as the FMLN and the U.S.-backed military government, around 80,000 were killed and 8,000 disappeared. 

After the civil war ended in 1992, an amnesty law in 1993 was imposed prohibiting the prosecution of crimes committed by government and guerilla forces. In 2016, however, the law was deemed unconstitutional by the country’s supreme court, allowing the cases to be reopened.