Guerilla Combatants in Perquín, El Salvador in 1990. SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — More than four decades after four Dutch journalists were ambushed and killed during El Salvador’s civil war, three former military officers have been sentenced for their roles in the attack, marking a rare victory for justice in a country still reckoning with its past.
A Salvadoran court on Thursday handed down prison terms to former Defense Minister Gen. José Guillermo García, 91, former treasury police director Col. Francisco Morán, 93, and Col. Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, 85, for the 1982 killings.
Each was sentenced to 60 years—15 years per victim—but will serve a maximum of 30 years in accordance with sentencing limits in place at the time of the crime.
The court also directed President Nayib Bukele, as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, to issue a formal public apology to the families of the victims.
The decision follows last month’s conviction of the three men in a trial that was closed to the public. García and Morán remain under police custody at a private hospital in San Salvador, where they will serve their sentences at their own expense.
Reyes Mena, who commanded the army’s Fourth Infantry Brigade in Chalatenango during the conflict, resides in the United States. El Salvador’s Supreme Court ordered extradition proceedings against him in March.
“Truth and justice have won over impunity and this is a historic event for El Salvador,” said Oscar Pérez, a representative of Fundación Comunicándonos, which advocates on behalf of the victims’ families.
The journalists—Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag, and Joop Willemson—had embedded with leftist guerrilla fighters and planned to report from behind rebel lines.
They were ambushed and killed by Salvadoran troops using assault rifles and machine guns.
According to the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador, established through the 1992 peace accords, the attack was premeditated.
The commission found that Reyes Mena orchestrated the ambush with the knowledge of other military officials, following an intelligence report that identified the journalists’ movements.
SEE ALSO: The Peace Route in El Salvador. Memorializing the Country’s Civil War
Other military figures, including Gen. Rafael Flores Lima and Sgt. Mario Canizales Espinoza was also implicated in the case. Canizales allegedly led the unit that carried out the killings, but both men have since died.
The case stands out in a country where accountability for civil war-era atrocities remains elusive. El Salvador’s brutal conflict, which lasted from 1980 to 1992, claimed the lives of an estimated 75,000 civilians, the vast majority at the hands of U.S.-backed government forces.
