Salvadoran jury convicts priest killer

by Timothy Elphick
A SALVADORAN army colonel ' has been found guilty of murdering six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in the early hours of a November morning two years ago.
The verdict brings to an end one of the most controversial trials in El Salvador's history and is the first time a high-ranking officer of the country's armed forces has been convicted of human rights abuses.
But the five-member jury that found Colonel Guillermo Benavides guilty of the murder charge also allowed seven other soldiers accused of complicity in the killings of the Jesuits to walk free.
A ninth man, Lieuntenant Yusshy Mendoza, was also found guilty on one of the cot.nts against him.
The six priests were dragged from their beds at San Salvador's Central American University on November 14 1989 and shot at point blank range. Suspicions that the military had been involved in their deaths were confirmed by El Salvador's President Alfredo Cristiani three months later.
After this week's hearing in the capital San Salvador Jesuits in the central American country, which has been torn apart by 11 years of civil war, voiced their anger that only Colonel Benavides was likely to pay for the murders.
"It is rather surprising and very difficult to believe that just one person was responsible for these murders," said Jose Maria Tojeira, the Jesuit provincial in Central America.
And Fr Miguel Estrada, the Jesuit university rector at the Central American University, said that if those on trial had not masterminded the murders there were ()Owls lying low in the army who had. "If the accused tell us where the planners of the killings are, we would be the first to call for their amnesty," he said.
The trial, which lasted three days, had to be temporarily abandoned on Saturday when 200 pro-army protesters began shouting outside the courtroom, alleging "internal interference" in the case.
American aid to El Salvador, which was frozen by the US Congress to ensure that military personnel implicated in the Jesuits' deaths stood trial, is now expected to be resumed.
The Salvadoran courts have one month to pass sentence on Colonel Benavides, who gave he order to kill the priests. The defence of the seven acquitted soldiers that they were carrying out orders given by a senior officer was accepted by the court.
Benavides was director of the Military Academy in San Salvador and the army commander in charge of the area around the university on the night the Jesuits were murdered. But observers suggest that officers higher up the chain of command were ultimately responsible.
• EL SALVADOR's government this week signed a UN sponsored peace accord with left-wing guerrilla leaders.