Spain requests extradition of 15 former Salvadoran military officials in 1989 priest killings

Source: Associated Press

Spain requests extradition of 15 former Salvadoran military officials in 1989 priest killings
By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, December 2, 3:58 PM

MADRID, Spain — Spain is asking the United States and El Salvador to extradite 15 former Salvadoran military officials in the killings of six Jesuit priests and two civilians in 1989.

The former officials formed El Salvador’s military leadership when the killings occurred during a military attack on a university in San Salvador. The Central American country was involved then in a civil war that killed some 75,000 people.

Spain wants the extradition of two people from the U.S. and 13 from El Salvador on charges of murder, terrorism and crimes against humanity. Five of the six slain priests were Spaniards.

El Salvador’s Supreme Court has twice this year refused the extradition of former military officials indicted by a Spanish judge in the killings.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/spain-requests-extradition-of-15-former-salvadoran-military-officials-in-1989-priest-killings/2011/12/02/gIQAZTayLO_story.html

School of the Americas Graduate Responsible for Priest Murders Found in U.S.

WASHINGTON ? The shocking event that galvanized opposition to the U.S. relationship with Central American death squads and that sparked the movement to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas is making headlines again. Former Salvadoran army officer Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos, convicted for the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests, a housekeeper and her 14-year-old daughter, was arrested by federal agents on October 18 in Los Angeles, California.

Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos, a sub-lieutenant in the notorious Atlacatl Battalion, took part in the November 16, 1989 massacre at the Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador. Less than a year before the brutal killings, Guevara Cerritos received military training at the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia.

A United Nations Truth Commission cited 26 Salvadoran officers for the 1989 "execution-style" massacre. Nineteen of those, including Guevara Cerritos, were trained at the School of the Americas, renamed in 2001 the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC. After its role in training human rights abusers came to light, Central Americans frequently dubbed the SOA the "School of Assassins.?

The SOA made headlines again in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Despite this shocking admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses connected to soldiers trained at the institution, no independent investigation into the training facility has ever taken place.

More:
http://www.soaw.org/news/news-alerts/3268

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/46736000/jpg/_46736364_1opener.jpg
In pictures: El Salvador remembers
El Salvador is marking the 20th anniversary of the Jesuit Massacre of 1989, when government troops murdered six prominent priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. (Words and pictures: Steve O'Hagan)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8361950.stm