El Salvador judge reopens case of 1981 civil war massacre
Source: Reuters
A judge in El Salvador has reopened the case of a massacre allegedly carried out by soldiers in 1981 that is considered the worst atrocity committed during the country's brutal civil war, a lawyer involved in the matter said on Saturday.
The massacre took place in the northeastern town of El Mozote, allegedly at the hands of an elite army unit, and resulted in the deaths of between 900 and 1,200 people, mostly women and children.
The decision by Judge Alberto Guzman to reopen the matter marks the first time such a case has been allowed since an amnesty law was declared unconstitutional in July.
The law sought to absolve militants on both sides of the conflict who took part in war crimes, and was often invoked by judges to explain why they could not hear such cases.
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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-el-salvador-massacre-idUSKCN122014
WORLD NEWS | Sat Oct 1, 2016 | 9:46pm EDT
By Gerardo Arbaiza | SAN SALVADOR
= new reply since forum marked as read
The conservative organization Accuracy in Media accused the Times and Post of timing their stories to release them just before the congressional debate. Five months later, Accuracy in Media devoted an entire edition of its AIM Report to Bonner (The writer who exposed it) in which its editor Reed Irvine declared, "Mr. Bonner had been worth a division to the communists in Central America."
Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas Enders attacked Bonner and Guillermoprieto before a Senate committee, stating that there had been a battle between guerrillas and the army, but "no evidence could be found to confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians." Enders also repeated the claim that only 300 people had lived in Mozote, and it was impossible for the death toll to have reached that reported in the Times and Post stories.
On February 8, Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, told the committee that "it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas
Although attacked less vigorously than Bonner, Alma Guillermoprieto was also a target of criticism. A Reagan official wrote a letter to the Post stating that she had once worked for a communist newspaper in Mexico, which Guillermoprieto denied
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mozote_massacre#Initial_reports_and_controversy
for all the people who never knew anything like this event, or so many others like it:
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Monument created to honor the victims of El Mozote Massacre.
Loved ones carrying the remains of their murdered loved ones, after they were exhumed.[/center]
Graphic images, El Mozote Massacre aftermath:
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1401&bih=679&q=el+mozote&oq=el+mozote&gs_l=img.3..0l3j0i30k1j0i5i30k1l3j0i24k1l3.1529.4735.0.5069.9.9.0.0.0.0.152.1059.0j9.9.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..0.9.1043.KidHZJq5CIM#hl=en&tbm=isch&q=el+mozote+massacre
Reagan & the Salvadoran Baby Skulls
By Robert Parry
January 30, 2007
Ronald Reagan’s many admirers may find this idea offensive, but – given a new report by the Washington Post – it might be fitting to have a display at Reagan National Airport to show how Salvadoran baby skulls were used as candle holders and good luck charms. Perhaps the presentation could contain skeletal remains of Guatemalans and Nicaraguans, too.
It might be modeled after skeletons on display in Cambodia from the slaughters by the Khmer Rouge. After all, it was President Reagan – more than any other person – who justified and facilitated the barbarity that raged through Central America in the 1980s, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of peasants, clergy and students, men, women and children.
Reagan portrayed the bloody conflicts as a necessary front in the Cold War, but the Central American violence was always more about entrenched ruling elites determined to retain their privileges against impoverished peasants, including descendants of the region’s Maya Indians, seeking social, political and economic reforms.
One of the most notorious acts of brutality occurred in December 1981 in and around the Salvadoran town of El Mozote. The government’s Atlacatl Battalion – freshly trained and newly armed thanks to Reagan’s hard-line policies – systematically slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children.
. . .
While Monterrosa may have ordered massacres in El Mozote and other towns in El Salvador, President Reagan and other senior U.S. officials collaborated in and covered up those crimes, along with acts of genocide in Guatemala and terrorism in Nicaragua.
Yet, the U.S. officials who supplied the guns, helicopters, advanced technology and political cover have never been called to account. Some, like former State Department official Elliott Abrams, have moved on to oversee the bloody chaos in Iraq.
More:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/012907.html
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Google images of the Atlacatl Battalion el mozote el Salvador, the death squad, trained by US forces:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Atlacatl+Battalion+el+mozote+el+salvador&biw=1401&bih=679&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiLo_KaxrvPAhXCNj4KHfmWDwQQ_AUIBygC&dpr=0.95#imgrc=_
GRAPHIC.
