Victims renew calls for justice El Mozote’s trial is underway Human Rights News

Expert testimonies from El Salvador this week have revealed significant new details about what many consider the savage massacre of the country’s 12-year civil war a decade ago.

Victims, experts and lawyers said the five-day hearings at the El Mozot trial found new information about the amount of knowledge the United States has. A massacre of nearly 1,000 civilians in 1981 By the US-trained Salvadoran forces, as well as the Salvadoran chain of command.

“Having experts who provide professional testimony that repeats and confirms the truth that victims have maintained over the years is a way of reparation, clarifying the truth and echoing through the international community,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a lawyer with a legal group of victims. through, he told Al Jazeera in a telephone interview.

The hearings took place when the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden put pressure on Central American governments to practice good governance, combat corruption, and reduce impunity.

They are also demanding new responsibilities and apologizing to the U.S., which allocated billions of dollars to the Salvadoran government in the 1980s as part of its push to combat regional communism, and often turned a blind eye to rights violations. .

The U.S. government has yet to apologize for its role in human rights violations in El Salvador, including the El Mozot massacre, although it has apologized for other atrocities during the Cold War in the region, such as the genocide in Guatemala and Argentina. Dirty war.

“It would be very reassuring for those of us who have survived, as we have lost so many families. [to receive an apology from the US government]”, Said Rosario Sanchez, a survivor of the El Mozote massacre, who attended this week’s hearings in the court of San Francisco Gotera (Moraza).

“The US is also responsible because they didn’t have to give money for such atrocities,” he told Al Jazeera over the phone.

‘Massacre strategy’

The case of El Mozote reopened in 2016, the country’s Supreme Court barred the trial of human rights violations committed during the war after the 1993 amnesty law was repealed.

In the fighting between the armed rebellion on the left and the US-backed Salvadoran army, approximately 75,000 Salvadorans were killed between 1980 and 1992. UN Truth Commission attributed About 85% of Salvador’s conflict in the state is violent.

The massacre of El Mozote took place during the three days of December 1981 Salvadoran soldiers raped and killed civilians In several towns in the Morazan region of northeastern El Salvador.

Seventeen military officers in El Salvador are currently on charges, including killings, including torture, rape and forced disappearances. Victims ’attorneys say a judge may decide that the case, still in the discovery phase, will continue to a second formal trial by the end of 2021.

At this week’s hearings, U.S. academic Terry Karl and a Central American expert testified that the Salvadoran military used a “strategy of destruction” in El Mozot and then described a cover-up for U.S. emergency and cover officials.

Charles said Allen Bruce Hazelwood, a U.S. military adviser, was in the Morazan department where the massacre took place.

“If that had been made public, U.S. aid would have been cut because it was illegal,” Charles said in a testimony based on a 1981 investigation in El Salvador in extensive interviews with prominent civilian actors in El Salvador. review of war and archival materials.

He also said that the US was aware that the Salvadoran army was using napalm, a very flammable mixture banned by the United Nations in 1981 against civilians.

Salvadoran Command

David Morales, a lawyer for the Cristosal human rights group in San Salvador, a member of the victims’ legal team, told reporters in court that Karl’s account fully shows that such military operations can only be “planned.” orders, supervision and coverage of the Salvadoran authorities ”.

The intelligent Pino, a former Peruvian colonel and expert in insurgency tactics, also declared in a new military document on April 29 and 30 that Operation Rescue, the official name of the army that happened in December 1981, had been ordered by senior officials.

This detail was particularly telling, as the military refused to comply with a court order to examine the military archives of the court in question – the main challenge in the case.

A forensic team is working on an exhumation site in the town of Yancolo as they search for human remains from the El Mozote massacre. [File: Jose Cabezas/Reuters]

“The systematic denial of Rescue by the Salvadoran Armed Forces is a disinformation strategy,” Pino said in his testimony, adding that the tactic is “used when events are obvious or dangerous and when what is left is denied.”

The Salvadoran government has not made any public statements about this week’s testimony through official channels. Neither the president nor the defense ministry responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment in a timely manner.

In the past, the Armed Forces of El Salvador said that the fighting in El Mozote was a battle between the army and the rebels, rather than unarmed civilians.

Reparations and justice

In the immediate aftermath of the El Mozot killings, the U.S. embassy in El Salvador also denied that the massacre took place and denied any involvement in U.S.-trained troops. But the publication of State Department department documents in 2018 showed a change in the U.S. Embassy’s stance.

Jean Manes, the US ambassador to El Salvador from 2015 to 2019, wrote on State Department cables about the El Mozote case: .

This week, a political attaché at the U.S. embassy told reporters at trial that the U.S. is “conducting a rule of law and an independent trial here in El Salvador,” without the U.S. directly mentioning what happened in El Mozot. “We believe that efforts to ensure accountability for human rights violations are important to ensure justice for victims,” the official said.

For his part, Biden said tackling impunity and corruption are priorities for his administration, which is developing $ 4 billion support package for Central America to address what it considers to be the main causes of migration increase in arrivals On the southern border of the United States.

A woman prays in memory of the El Mozote massacre in the town of El Mozote on December 7, 2019 [File: Jose Cabezas/Reuters]

“The jury still doesn’t know if all that has been said so far is rhetorical or if the U.S. government is interested in correcting such horrific episodes,” said Oscar Chacon, executive director of Alianza Americas, an immigrant rights organization. He told Al Jazeera that he had focused on Central America.

Meanwhile, in the case of the victims of the El Mozot massacre, the trial offers an opportunity to demand responsibility and have their voices heard. In addition to apologizing, Sanchez believes the U.S. should help with reparations for the victims.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered compensation in 2012 and then the Salvadoran government agreed to a list of them, but victims’ lawyers say only the state has followed suit. about 15% of those promises.

Sanchez added that anyone involved in the killings should be brought to justice. “If they are from any country, if they can participate in what happened in El Salvador, we have the right to a trial.”