General in El Salvador Torture and Killings Can Be Deported, Immigration Court Rules
Source: New York Times
General in El Salvador Torture and Killings Can Be Deported, Immigration Court Rules
By JULIA PRESTON
MARCH 12, 2015
In a decision setting a significant human rights precedent, an immigration appeals court has ruled that a former defense minister of El Salvador, a close ally of Washington during the civil war there in the 1980s, can be deported from the United States because he participated in or concealed torture and murder by his troops.
The decision, published Wednesday by the Board of Immigration Appeals in the case of the former official, Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, found that he had a direct role in the abuse and killings of civilians because of his “command responsibility” as the top military officer. It is the first time the highest immigration court has weighed in to interpret a central issue in a human rights law passed in 2004.
The ruling will make it easier to deport foreigners who were top commanders based on violations by soldiers serving under them.
“Congress clearly intended that commanders should be held accountable if their subordinates commit torture and extrajudicial killings,” the panel of three judges wrote.
Among other crimes, the board found that General Vides was directly involved in covering up the role of National Guard troops under his command in the rape and murder of four American churchwomen in December 1980. Those killings, as much as any others by the Salvadoran armed forces during the decade-long war, revealed the rampant violence of the military that Washington staunchly supported in its Cold War confrontation with leftist guerrillas.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/us/general-in-el-salvador-torture-and-killings-can-be-deported-immigration-court-rules.html?_r=0
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