Spain orders trial for priest killings in El Salvador

[Judi Lynn]

May 31, 2011
Spain orders trial for priest killings in El Salvador

MADRID - SPAIN'S High Court on Monday ordered 20 soldiers from El Salvador to be put on trial for the killing of five Spanish and one Salvadoran Jesuit priests during the Central American country's bloody 12-year civil war in 1989.

Judge Eloy Velasco ordered the arrest of 19 of those accused - one is in jail - for terrorist murder and crimes against humanity in the case of the priests, one of whom was rector of the Central American University at the time.

Spanish judges have used international law in recent years to begin proceedings against soldiers who have not been prosecuted in their own countries, including Chile, Argentina, Iraq, Israel and the United States. Two officers were jailed in 1992 in El Salvador for the murder of the priests, but were freed little more than a year later under an amnesty.

Salvadoran Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez said he would hand any arrest warrant received over to his country's legal authorities. Legal action in Spain was brought by a human rights group and the sister of one of the priests, who was Spanish.

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