2023-12-27 14:42:50
The United States Government expressed its concern on Tuesday about the judicial arrest warrants issued in El Salvador against former President Alfredo Cristiani (1989-1994) and the leaders of Congress in 1993, including Rubén Zamora, a critic of Nayib Bukele’s Executive. .
Washington expressed “its deep concern about the decision taken on December 22 by an investigative court to issue arrest warrants against former deputies members of the Board of Directors of the Legislative Assembly in 1993 (…) as well as against former President Alfredo Félix Cristiani,” indicated a brief statement released by the US Embassy in El Salvador.
This resolution was issued by Judge Mirtala Portillo in the trial for the El Mozote massacre, and in which provisional detention was ordered against the former officials for supposedly covering up military commanders with an amnesty law. The US Government added in the letter that “the victims of the El Mozote massacre deserve justice after 42 years,” but “unfortunately, this sentence does not help that objective.”
Meanwhile, a group of civil organizations in El Salvador demanded that the provisional arrest order against Zamora, also a former presidential candidate in 1994, be withdrawn, considering it as an attempt to “silence” society.
Various actors and Zamora’s family have indicated that he is a victim of “political persecution” and that the aforementioned law was not signed or supported by him.
The amnesty law and the El Mozote massacre
In 1993, shortly before a United Nations Truth Commission revealed its report on human rights violations during the civil war (1980-1992), the Legislative Assembly enacted an amnesty law, which was declared unconstitutional in 2016 by the Supreme Court of Justice.
This law kept the process closed for the El Mozote massacre, considered one of the largest massacres of civilians in Latin America at the hands of an Army, and was reopened with the annulment.
According to the 1993 Report of the United Nations Truth Commission in El Salvador, between December 10 and 13, 1981, units of the Atlacatl Battalion “deliberately and systematically” tortured and executed girls, boys, men and women from the canton. El Mozote and other surrounding areas.
For this fact, a group of soldiers are being prosecuted, among them the former Minister of Defense Guillermo García, for charges of murder, rape, deprivation of liberty, violation of residence, robbery, damage, havoc, preparatory acts of terrorism and terrorism, charges declared as crimes against humanity.
The Salvadoran civil war (1980-1992), which pitted the Army against the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrilla, caused some 75,000 deaths and hundreds of massacres of civilians attributed to the military.
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