Task force criticizes El Salvador for failure to bring killers of Jesuit priests to justice

WASHINGTON — A 19-member congressional task force concluded Monday that government prosecutors in El Salvador made little effort to determine whether top military officers ordered the murders of six Jesuit priests last Nov. 16, and said the current investigation has come to a “standstill.”

The Democratic group, led by Rep. Joe Moakley, D-Mass., includes many of the most vocal critics of White House foreign policy in Central America. Its report said that the murder of the Jesuit priests and two clergymen in a separate incident were part of a continuing pattern of human rights abuses by the Salvadoran military.

The task force was appointed by House Speaker Thomas Foley to make an assessment of El Salvador’s progress on human rights as a prelude to renewed congressional debate over continued U.S. military aid to that country.

“We believe that the murder of the Jesuits grew out of an attitude of suspicion and anger toward activist segments of the church that remains all too widespread within the armed forces and certain other sectors of Salvadoran society,” the task force report stated.

The panel’s members said that politically motivated assassinations “reflect problems within the Salvadoran armed forces that go far beyond the actions of a particular unit on a particular night.”

“Major reforms within the military are necessary to make a recurrence of such crimes unlikely, to insulate the judicial process from military pressure and to strengthen Salvadoran democracy,” the task force concluded.

The six Jesuits, their cook and her daughter were killed by uniformed men at the University of Central America in San Salvador during the height of an offensive by leftist rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

Army Col. Guillermo Alfredo Benavides and eight U.S.-trained members of the Salvadoran armed forces have been charged in the killings. The Democratic House members warned that there is a good chance Benavides may not even stand trial.

With some misgivings, members credited Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani with making “a sincere effort to encourage a professional investigation.”