El Salvador: Court Orders Investigation of 1981 Massacre

El Salvador: Court Orders Investigation of 1981 Massacre
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: December 10, 2012

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has ruled that a 20-year-old amnesty law does not cover war crimes committed during El Salvador’s long civil war. The ruling, which was announced Monday, ordered the government to investigate the massacre in the region of El Mozote 31 years ago and to prosecute and punish those hold responsible. More than 800 civilians, many of them children, were killed by the military in the worst massacre of the war, which began in 1979 and ended in 1992. But Salvadoran courts have refused to investigate the killings, citing a 1993 amnesty law. The regional court’s ruling means that “El Salvador will have to secure truth and justice for the crimes committed during this massacre,” said Viviana Krsticevic, executive director for the Center for Justice and International Law in Washington, which joined with the human rights office of the San Salvador archdiocese to take the case to the regional court.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/world/americas/el-salvador-court-orders-investigation-of-1981-massacre.html?ref=americas&_r=0

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