__________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
El Salvador
Generals found not guilty
Trial involves death of American nuns
On November 2, a judge instructed jurors deliberating the fate of two former Salvadoran generals that the men need not have ordered the murder of three American nuns and a lay woman in order to be held responsible for the crime.
Former Defense Minister Jose Guillermo Garcia and former Salvadoran National Guard leader Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova were being sued by families of the four women who were murdered in December 1980. Five Salvadoran National Guard members were convicted of the killings, and sentenced to 30 years in a Salvadoran prison. Garcia and Vides Casanova retired to Florida in 1989 and were granted US residency permits.
Lawyers for the families of Sisters Ti Ford, Mara Clark, and Dorothy Kale and of Jean Donovan, who had filed the $100 million lawsuit, told the jury that hundreds of declassified documents, testimony from a former US ambassador to El Salvador, and documentation on the killings of other religious figures all supported their charge that Garcia and Vides Casanova did nothing to stop the massacres. The former generals also helped cover up evidence that the soldiers were responsible, the lawyers said.
However, the jury decided that the former Salvadoran officials were not responsible for the murders. After a short period of deliberation, the jurors rejected the families’ claims.
Back to Catholic World Report December 2000 Table of Contents