RIGHTS-EL SALVADOR: A Blow to Impunity

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Raúl Gutiérrez

SAN SALVADOR, Dec 28 2007 (IPS) - "It’s a condemnation of impunity," said activist Benjamín Cuellar, referring to an Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling against El Salvador for its lack of a thorough investigation of the murder of businessman Mauricio García Prieto.

Cuellar, director of the Central American University’s Institute of Human Rights (IDHUCA), the plaintiff in the case before the Costa Rica-based Court, told IPS that the sentence, which cannot be appealed, should help overcome "the perverse investigation" carried out by Salvadoran authorities with the aim of "covering up for and protecting" the perpetrators.

The state should conclude the pending investigations with respect to the homicide of Mauricio García Prieto and the threats and harassment suffered by his parents, José Mauricio and Gloria de García Prieto, states the Inter-American Court sentence, which forms part of the Organisation of American States (OAS) system.

In the verdict handed down on Dec. 22, the judges also say the state violated the rights of due process, judicial protection and personal integrity.

The sentence stipulates that the Salvadoran state must compensate the victim’s family for the legal costs incurred, provide them with medical and psychological assistance "to help heal" their physical and psychological injuries, and publish the main content of the sentence in at least one national media outlet.

The Court only pronounced itself on what it considered the shortcomings in the investigation of the murder, and on the threats, but not on the killing itself, because El Salvador did not accept the competence of the Court until June 1995, a year after García Prieto was killed.

On Jun. 10, 1994, García Prieto, his wife and their five-month-old son were intercepted by two masked men, one of whom shouted "We’ve come to kill you, son-of-a-bitch!" before hitting the businessman and shooting him at point-blank range, according to witness testimony.

Human rights organisations and the García Prieto family say the murder was linked to several killings carried out by death squads during that period against former commanders of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which had recently become a legal political party.

The FMLN guerrillas demobilised after the 1992 peace agreement that put an end to El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. Far-right death squads, which activists say were never dismantled, are blamed for the majority of the 75,000 killings and 8,000 forced disappearances committed during the armed conflict.

The plaintiffs in the case say the investigation into García Prieto’s murder was marred by irregularities, and served as a cover-up for those who ordered the killing.

Gloria de García Prieto has repeatedly claimed that the murder was the result of an inconclusive business deal, but that those who planned the killing took advantage of the prevailing atmosphere of instability to make it look like a political crime.

After the murder, the wealthy García Prieto family was in constant contact with police chiefs and prosecutors, but never got a satisfactory answer about the progress of the investigation.

Months later, they began to receive threatening telephone calls, and noticed they were being followed. Although two people are in prison for carrying out the murder, those who planned and ordered the killing have never been identified.

De García Prieto alleged some time ago that a former army general is one of those who ordered his son killed, but so far he has not been able to come up with any proof.

David Morales, who was working in the Human Rights Ombudsperson’s Office (PDDH) at the time of the murder, said the Inter-American Court ruling is "positive and very important" in the fight for justice.

Morales, a lawyer who led the investigation of the case, told IPS that the PDDH had concluded that García Prieto may have been killed by a death squad made up of members of the old "security forces" purposely embedded in the National Civil Police (PNC) when it was created in 1993.

"Several police chiefs tried to hinder the investigation," said Morales, who also represented the plaintiffs in the case against El Salvador being heard by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, involving the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero by an ultra-rightwing death squad.

Early government reactions to the ruling, published in a local newspaper, stated that a detailed study of its contents would be carried out, although discontent was also expressed.

IPS repeatedly tried to contact a government spokesperson, but although Foreign Ministry representatives promised to set up an interview, it was never granted.

Cuellar reported that the administration of Salvadoran President Antonio Saca tried to settle the case out of court early this year through a financial offer agreed to by García Prieto’s widow, but the attempt failed because the agreement had been reached "behind the backs of the Court and the rest of the family."

The murder is an "emblematic case" according to the head of IDHUCA, because it was not a political killing, and it "unveiled the perverse face of the state’s impunity, which had previously been masked."

He also said that the government’s reactions are "a conditioned reflex, since El Salvador is the state that has showed the greatest incompliance with the recommendations of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights."

This is the second ruling against El Salvador handed down by the Inter-American Court. The first verdict was issued in March 2005 and involved the forced disappearance of two sisters, aged three and seven, at the hands of the army during a military counterinsurgency operation in 1982.

The plaintiffs in the case still have claims outstanding against the Salvadoran government which they allege has not completely fulfilled the requirements spelt out in the Court of Human Rights ruling.